Girl With No Face: An Open [Love]Letter to Allie X
Fanmail by way of essay, or; Have you heard the good news? Allie X has a new album out RIGHT NOW
Fourteen years ago, as a high school freshman, I sat in my art class with the assignment presented before me: why do you like your favorite artist?
The room was awash with questions such as, “How many pages do we need to write again?” “Do we have to use twelve-point Times New Roman?” and “Can we write about bands and singers and stuff instead?”
There was a significant pause from the teacher as she considered the latter. She was a woman who would later pivot to photography; I would go to her for my senior pictures, and—without asking and without mentioning the additional work—she would painstakingly photoshop out my cleavage from any picture in which it was visible (off with her tits). But she relented, as we were a group of fourteen-year-olds without the language and worldliness to understand why Klimt’s eroticism was profound and not simply tingle-inducing.
I wore my pseudo-hipster badge proudly at this point, though I never vocalized it; I was far too shy to say, “Oh?? You haven’t heard of Emilie Autumn? Of The Dresden Dolls? Of Rasputina?” I was a wretched, pretentious teen, and I judged in silence—perhaps the worst variation.
All of that is to say, as I listened to my peers pick proven Hot 100 hitmakers, I chose Imogen Heap. This is hilarious because if you know anything about Imogen Heap, you know that her music was all over television. This was post-Dear Sister, pre-Ariana Grande covering “Goodnight and Go.” She wasn’t exactly an out-there, underground choice. But I puffed my chest and took my analysis of her work seriously in my terrible, pompous, teenager-y way.
I wrote of her layered vocals harmonizing with herself, her unconventional instrumentation, and her lyrical ability to transplant my fourteen-year-old brain inside stories I’m sure she never intended.
I had once envisioned a jukebox musical using Imogen Heap’s discography as I rode the bus home, my head rattling against the window with the ghostly harmonies of “Have You Got It In You?” blaring from my iPod Nano. I closed my eyes and basked in the drama of a stage play, its plot beats matching the run of I Megaphone and Speak for Yourself. I never wrote the musical, but it lives on when “The Walk” appears on shuffle.
When Allie X—an avant-garde, synth-pop artist—released her studio album, Cape God, I drove to work with the threat of a global shutdown looming, eyes trained on the road as I pieced together a musical about two sisters, addiction, and a no-good man.
But this isn’t about my imaginings: this is about Allie X’s new, provocative, smooth as steel, Cold War goth club-anthemic album, Girl With No Face.
And also about me!
Full disclosure: I am not a music critic, though I love Todd in the Shadows and Mic the Snare. I run on pure vibes and a deep-seated devotion to my feelings, and sometimes I endeavor to put words to the raw-throated scream-singing elicited by certain tunes.
Allie X has always made me feel things.
In the beginning, I was your bitch, and you were mine
From the moment I heard the twinkling tones and sardonic lilting of “Bitch,” I was hooked.
Picture this: I sit in front of my laptop at age nineteen, legs crossed beneath me in a worn computer chair. My walls are painted a violent red, and my bedroom is configured to have maximum media output (my desk held the television and the laptop), so I’m being constantly blasted by noise and information. I’m scrolling through my lovingly curated tumblr dash, and I see—
Immediately, my brain chemistry was severely altered. What is this melody? I typed the lyrics into a search engine, which led me to this video:
I watched, hypnotized by goth Rapunzel spinning in an endless loop, falling deeply and madly in love. Here was someone who perfectly matched my sensibilities. By the time I devoured the music video for “Catch”—clocking the clever way she sings the bridge in two breaths—I was a fool for Allie X.
From CollXtion I to the UnSolved Era to CollXtion II to Super Sunset and Cape God, I followed her evolution beat for beat, netting an acknowledgment from her tumblr account at one point.
There’s a lot of persona to sort through; there are puzzle pieces that fit together in a multitude of ways resulting in different portraits of the artist known as Allie X.
There’s an unmistakable mystique to someone who stacks three pairs of sunglasses from the bridge of nose to forehead, drags her fingers along a keyboard, and warbles about “Casanova” fucking her over. In her earlier eras, she was rarely seen without a pair obscuring her eyes. Meetings with fans always involved a Polaroid souvenir—a physical keepsake that renders the backdrop black and erases details with a flash. It’s a remarkable contrast to her music—layered, personal, and nebulous.
And as human nature dictates, the persona shifted.
I’ll never be a lady, why make me feel a fool?
Allie X’s brand of femininity speaks to me as a queer woman. Her music and lyricism say, “I am a woman, a girl, but there’s an asterisk present.”
I feel most comfortable in my femininity when it crosses into performance—when it’s exaggerated in a way most don’t find appealing and borders on uncanny. The Super Sunset era, with all of its drag queen-inspired aesthetic glory, reached out to tell me personally (through my headphones) that this was an okay way to be a woman.
I was twenty-three in the midst of what I now understand will be a lifelong crisis of identity (with ebbing comfortability) when it dropped, and the visual of Woman As Performance paired with the honest lyrics of “Little Things” gave the reassurance I desperately needed.
This through-line is something I’ve kept close to my chest, adjacent to my eyes, parallel to my English Major brain. I look for it in her new releases.
“Bitch,” “Simon Says,” “Girl of the Year,” and “Regulars” all suggest a yearning and simultaneous misery of traditional roles, a desire to fit in even though it’s counterintuitive to your core. What good has it ever done me to adhere? To regulate my instincts and flatten myself into the facsimile of a Respectable Woman? In the past, it kept me closeted. It kept me quiet, boring, and with few outlets. I wrote to appease. I pushed no boundaries outward because I refused to press against the ones inside myself.
The release of “Girl With No Face” (the single) coincided with yet another crucial development in self-identity. 2023 was a year of potential auto-combustion with more downs than ups but with better, firmer Goods than Outright Bads. I was settling into myself. I’m sure there was something crazy happening with planetary alignments—there always is—that caused all the needed purging that began at the beginning of the year and was still eeking out by November.
On the 16th, we celebrated the 4th birthday of our sweet mutt, Chickpea.
On the 16th, I listened to “Girl with No Face” on a loop as I baked a dog-safe cake. Something unknowable churned inside me. “Torment the girl, she can ruin your world—”
My next full evolution would be at the hands of special Christmas Eve treats that brought me face to face with the shape of my soul, and because Allie X is always on my current playlist, that churning solidified into revelation.
I'm the girl with no face
You could learn a thing or two
Then you're gonna thank me
Say, "I never met a girl like you"
I took stock of myself. Who am I? I am:
a writer
queer
wife
library assistant
a creative
a wonder
woman
an absolute fucking delight when I wanna be and a bitch (boom-boom) the rest of the time
In The Story of X: Chapter 3, a specific line perfectly echoes against the walls of my skull:
“I’ll grow my hair so goddamn long you’ll all wish that you knew me”
I gnash my teeth privately and yearn for acknowledgment of my art—on my terms. That clenching, sinking, churning, livewire desire has always held me in a vice-grip. “You will know me. You must. You’ll want to.”
I am every face you’ve gazed upon; not a single one is recognizable. I own myself—my personhood, my persona—and not a single goddamn person has anything worthwhile to tell me about it. The world is a fucking disaster, but I am my own master.
Music as View-Master
Music wields an unspeakable power as a tool—the swiss army knife of all art forms for its sheer adaptability and interpretability. It’s saved me from every writing slump, block, and lull I’ve ever experienced.
“Milk”—a bonus track from the deluxe version of Cape God—inspired the pathos of my tragic vampiric protagonist, Gray Alice. As Ms. X desperately sings, “let me back in from the wild / I can be your golden child,” I break. Every time, I break. I’m immediately inside the head of this character and her yearning for the unconditional maternal love that will only continue to elude her from the source.
In addition to being a mainstay on daily playlists, Allie X has made an appearance on every writing playlist I’ve crafted. “Focus” on SALTLAND, capturing the dreamy atmosphere of true love forming in the violent atmosphere of a haunt; “Limited Love” on Dionysus in Silk, encapsulating the feelings of two lovelorn celebrities yearning in pure fury for their missing ex (“Not So Bad in LA” makes an appearance as well); “Learning in Public” for The Pre-Afterlife of Hiram Paris, underlining the point of putting one’s life together without direction after an incredibly public shattering; “Sanctuary” on The Eyes of the Gyre Are Red Like Blood, creating the ethos of one character’s take on her relationship that inevitably takes a dramatically ironic turn.
As I gear up to write my next novel—Harlequinade!—I stare at a scattered word document containing character notes, half-written paragraphs, and potential story beats, safe in the knowledge that Girl With No Face will contain the banger needed to propel me forward.
I adore heavily layered music; I love when the production is a symphony of chaos that ebbs into each other and flows into a crisp, complex experience. This is part of the reason Left at London’s “There is a Place for You Here” clicked with me so instantly.
The details of my Imogen Heap essay are lost to me now, but I recall placing special emphasis on the layers. It’s something for my brain to sort through, to excite on repeated listens when a new noise breaks through the fabric of my headphones—something to dissect in a purely mad scientist kind of way.
Sometimes it’s the little things: the scratch of fingers sliding along the guitar in “Regulars” or the way her voice breaks at an emotional fever pitch in “Rising Tide.” In Girl With No Face, it’s the Double Mastectomy Angels who concur “yeah!” when the narrator tells her doctor to “sign me up for June” in the gender-queering banger “Off With Her Tits.”
During the album’s promotional cycle, Allie X posted teasers on her social media using isolated stems. A shrill, guttural scream bleeding into the shriek of a guitar; the tiny “aah!” at the end of a screaming, prolonged vocal run; the raw synths holding up the structure of this darkened club she’s brought us into. “Bluh-bluh-black eye,” she enunciates as she falls through a swirling vortex, assuring that the parts of the whole are just as important, and just as magical as its sum.
The instrumentals of “Black Eye” are reminiscent of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” the banger every millennial wishes they could experience in a dark, dusty club beneath cold neons. Here, she promises, is an album of “Blue Mondays” in terms of vibes, iconography, and danceability.
She delivers magnificently.
Girl With No Face: The Review [★★★★★]
There’s something artistically pure about Girl With No Face—a maturation of the synth-heavy sound of her CollXtion days blending with the dark pop progression of Super Sunset and Cape God—that says, “This is me! This is ideologically me! Now let’s hit the backroom of the club, bitch, and get existential about it.”
Allie X produced the album, by the way. It’s her all the way down—soup to industrial nuts. Everything about this project is made with deep, obsessive intentionality, and personal, occasionally harsh lyrics about the reality of Alexandra Hughes beneath the mask of Allie X.
The bright opening synth chords of “Weird World” wouldn't be out of place on CollXtion I, a cloying wink to the roots of the Allie X persona. This is immediately knocked away by driving bass and drums a la New Order. Much of Girl With No Face takes inspiration from Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins, New Order, and so many others.
As an opening track, “Weird World” promises exactly what the title suggests as Allie X reminds us that “Big Brother’s always out of office,” and that “heaven don’t want women.” The album explores themes of self-expression and self-possession in an uncaring universe, and “Weird World” is its microcosm. See, she used to be a dream girl—a “Girl of the Year,” or a “Regular,” perhaps—but with the life lived between albums, she’s taken stock of herself and the world around her (and us—have you seen the state of things?) and draws the conclusion that nurture won the battle.
In “John and Jonathan,” she plays with the idea of fan interactions, its temporality, and the tableau of performing for an audience who will never truly know you and may only view you as a banger-machine. She characterizes the titular fans—a moment of sonder that she wonders will be returned.
But how will I know if they care for me?
Do I believe what they say?
When I'm on stage they all cheer for me
I must soak up the praise
And save it for a rainy day
The theming continues in the tongue-in-cheek “You Slept On Me,” a song that employs stan language, makes reference to Sprite, Krispy Kreme, and Paula Deen, and has an underlying anger in its sarcastic delivery.
The voice of legion in the post-chorus seems to channel her fans, the Xs, demanding divine retribution for ignoring CollXtion II and for Pitchfork rating Cape God a 6.8.
Time to get down on one knee
Tell me why you slept on me
“You Slept On Me” is manic with its instrumentation and its adlibs—a Tori Amos-esque trill specifically caught my ear. For a song laden with sarcasm, Allie X throws everything she has into it—there are no half-measures.
Speaking of manic, “Hardware Software” is a song about sitting in front of the computer for hours on end, being absolutely inundated with technology and the internet, all in a spoken-word drone. With the interjection of a harpsichord, I made some sort of audible exclamation muted to my headphone-wrapped ears. I felt instantly that this song was written specifically for the version of me who discovered Allie X while scrolling on tumblr, sitting too close to two screens with her earbuds protecting her from the outside world, and processing a massive amount of information just to code her blog.
Girl With No Face contains a sort of rawness that packs a specific gut-punch as a long-time fan; being an X, I had grown used to Allie X’s artifice, of the understanding that there is an unconquerable distance between artist and audience. I will never truly know Alexandra Hughes, even if I comb through the words of Allie X with a magnifying glass. Such is the nature of art.
But as she prepared us for the release, Allie X specified that she wanted to be more open to her audience. The raw, desperate vocals in “Galina”—particularly the second verse—betray the underlying fear of life’s rug-pulls. It’s something that prevails throughout the album, the unhewn edges of her voice piercing through slick, layered, pitch-perfect production. The dichotomy of Alexandra and Allie X blurs.
The ending run of “Saddest Smile,” “Staying Power,” and “Truly Dreams” puts me in a tragedian mindset that leaves me on the floor, still shaking my ass through the horrors.
“Saddest Smile” is a song about grinning through the pain because, God, what else can you do?
If you're sad, it's alright
You'll put on your saddest smile
You'll be loved, at least be liked
Oh, your little heart has turned as black as night
Infused with humming bass and a haunting, prevailing aria, “Saddest Smile” conjures images of white teeth gnashing behind a thin-lipped smile, eyes squinted with the threat of unfallen tears. It’s exhausting—it’s uncomfortably relatable.
“Staying Power” reflects on Allie X’s career thus far: she’s aware of her unconventionality so she plays to unconventional audiences, she’s endured an extraordinary amount of pain and setbacks as both halves of her identity, but she’s still here through it all. It’s a song akin to a clenched fist, anger belying resilience.
I tried to make myself attractive in the ways I could
I tried to turn a failing body into something good
If the world could love me, it could take away the hurt
But love, it doesn't penetrate the only thing that works isStaying power, I've got the power
A truly intimate explosion fraught with detail and honest admissions in such a way that I impulsively want to avert my gaze but simply cannot stop looking.
As it winds to a close, a bell tolls faintly in the background, sounding more like a melodic, fierce hammer strike.
“Truly Dreams” begins with nostalgia-tinged vocalizations before shifting to sparkling synths, harkening to “Prime” from CollXtion I. My arms tingled with goosebumps. Tears burned my eyes, and as I listened on—a dance overtaking me—I felt as if I had arrived at the end of a long journey.
I'm just a girl in a weird world
And no one cares, yеah, no ones cares
But I live in my mind and I see through my eyes
And that's enough when I get furious
Ah, life is just a cabaret
And ah, no one can take that away
With insane, intentional vocal undulations that contain the same cheerful charm of CollXtion I’s pop-nihilistic “Prime,” “Truly Dreams” is a genuine smile, bookending the album with a true evolution of the Allie X persona.
If you ask me, “What’s your favorite Allie X song?” I have an easy answer. It’s “Too Much to Dream,” a song from CollXtion II.
“Too Much to Dream” is a song I have an intimate connection to. It’s equal parts screaming the lyrics with tears pricking my eyes as I fly down the highway and dancing self-consciously in my home surrounded by friends with my face pointed towards the ceiling to hide.
Anyone can see that I've had too much to dream
I'm singing 'til I'm screaming, dancing 'til I'm bleeding
A cruel reality when you've had too much to dream
Better keep your eyes shut, cause you don't wanna wake up
Grin and bear it, smile through the pain—you must keep going because that's the only way to live.
“Truly Dreams” functions as a superior sequel, eliciting the same emotions running parallel but in the opposite direction. I’m driving by my former self on the highway, and we’re glancing at each other with knowing smiles.
I'll keep dreaming
And if it's not enough, then
I'll just keep on hustling, dreaming
With all my might
Truly dreams never die
Don't worry, baby, they never die
The song ends with a saccharine, tight-jawed reminder that “I’ll never die,” promising that Allie X—the artist, the persona—will remain.
She, honestly, could end the Allie X persona here and rebrand (though I would never want her to), as her body of work will self-perpetuate. Girl With No Face feels, in part, a conclusion, as it functions as a key to interpreting her previous work. Simultaneously, it is a wink and nod to us, signaling: “I’m not going anywhere.”
I never met a girl like you
Back in 2020, I had a meet-and-greet ticket for the Cape God tour. Before the pandemic shut the world down, I dreamed about it in vagaries—fumbling to communicate what she and her work mean to me culminating with the taking of the Polaroid while I smiled through tears.
The meet-and-greet never happened; the tour was rescheduled and subsequently canceled due to the artist’s previously unknown autoimmune condition. I’ve been careful not to reference this directly, as though it informs her work, I don’t feel it’s right to speculate on one’s medical condition. Even with her new openness, some things still feel Hippocratic.
But without Cape God’s truncated run, Girl With No Face might not exist in its current form as the truest expression of her artistry. I’ve spent thousands of words trying to convince you to listen to Allie X, and if you’ve made it this far, you’re either an X or you’re someone with a lot of love for me. If it’s the latter, then you’ve probably received a prodding text about the album release.
And though I take every chance I get to spread the synths, something remains privately magical between Allie X’s musical universe and me.
DON’T SLEEP ON ALLIE X.
Post-script: In case you were wondering which song will be fueling my next novel, it’s “Saddest Smile,” which will be a character study of an actor who managed to get entangled with two cults with disparate ideologies and too many love triangles to name.