Hannah Versus: The Japanese House’s “Boyhood” and Ruston Kelly’s The Weakness

The Japanese House’s “Boyhood” and Ruston Kelly’s The Weakness made me think a lot about my relationship with gender and with music, to the point where I wrote about both artists and I liked it enough to post it here.

I might make this a series of “Hannah Versus” whenever I feel like writing about something, and I’m calling it that because I’m amused that it sounds like I’m gearing up to personally fight whoever I feel like writing about that day. And because “Hannah Versus Boyhood” is inherently a funny title.

Without any further ado, here are my thoughts on “Boyhood” by the Japanese House and The Weakness by Ruston Kelly.

HANNAH VERSUS: EVERY “BOYHOOD”, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE

Ethel Cain told me, as lots of transgender people say, that gender is the least interesting thing about her. But when you’re first questioning, or if you’re stuck “living the question”, it becomes the only thing about you, it’s all you can think about, so you infodump about it to everyone in sight. I love conversations about gender with confidently queer friends and open-minded straight friends, I even love explaining to my cishet brother what he/him lesbians are. It’s the grey area that’s hard for me, following the person in circles as they try to intellectually justify something that can’t be intellectualized. I’m sympathetic and I don’t blame anyone: I cannot imagine figuring shit out in this horrible climate for queer people. (Though I do recommend at least asking yourself at all; even if you decide you’re cis or straight, you get to know yourself better.)

The UK artist Amber Bain has made that grey area her comfort zone. Her band name The Japanese House originated from a childhood experience where she passed as a boy to a girl she liked, which the girl reciprocated until she found out. The music reflects this androgyny in a more vulnerable way than, say, the Boygenius trio calling each other dudes as a knowing subversion, though both are valid methods of expression. Amusingly, people initially thought Bain was actually Matt Healy, then assumed she was trans due to her own androgynous appearance, which is more to unpack than I feel like doing here but only adds further mystique to Bain’s music. Even now, she calls herself “gay and gender-obsessed” on BBC (BBC!) Radio 1, and she did so while premiering her song “Boyhood.”

“Boyhood” is an upbeat little romp, a brief country daydream with violins and whirring synth leads. Yet lyrically, the scale is multiversal, looking at all her alternate selves and trying to reconcile them with the person she became. She sings: “I used to be somebody else/and I’m still out looking for me,” ironically enough in a falsetto. There are “yous” in the song (“I could have been somebody who/you wanted to have around to hold”), and the subject seems to be fluid as well. Is it the girl that thought Bain was a boy? Is it herself from another timeline? Is it someone else altogether? No answer. Just more questions. Just that constant feeling something’s inherently ‘wrong’, like a splinter in your mind, that won’t go away— “I wanna change, but it’s nothing new.”

I’m lucky in that I never felt like I had a boyhood or girlhood. For better or worse, I grew up with neutrality; If you’re seen as a cis straight (white) male in a world where being a cis straight white male is default, you can get away with fading into the background, if you want. And I still try to conduct myself invisibly, mostly appearing in “boymode” for safety reasons. I’m not concerned with passing, but only because passing takes too much damn work. Cis women don’t exactly have boymode, and at least one friend has expressed jealousy, like I’ve “won womanhood” by not being perceived or treated as a woman except by those who know me, thus avoiding misogyny. I’m not sure being invisible is better than being a woman, though — unless, like Bain, you didn’t feel connected in the first place.

Listening to “Boyhood” reminds me of the deeper feelings that come with a gender-centered connection; intense over-‘empathy’, fascination on the edge of limerence, in some pre egg-crack cases, the irrational desire to figure out meiosis until me and that person both had the bodies and lives we want. That’s not physically possible, so I’d get close by making myself a doormat.

I admire how Bain seemingly finds strength in uncertainty; the prospect of diving into that uncertainty terrifies me. I’d be terrified of speaking with her or even writing about her outside of this post. But if I changed my mind, I’m sure there would be a lot to talk about.

HANNAH VERSUS: THE MULTIPLICITY OF RUSTON KELLY

“We are all dually feminine and masculine. To give in to both of those things would strengthen us as human beings and there is such a drastic difference between men, and men who are terrified of their own femininity.” — Ruston Kelly

There’s a reason I didn’t write about this album professionally; I’m not familiar with Kelly’s music beyond a guest spot on Charli Adams’ underrated gem Bullseye. But I did hear this record and find it fascinating.

I don’t know how Ruston Kelly identifies, but he’s someone that proudly embraces femininity, whatever that word means, as thoroughly as his masculinity, whatever that word means. Songwriter Ruston Kelly intones like Jason Isbell, doubles his vocals like Chris Cornell, then drops melancholic non-sequiturs like Phoebe Bridgers and draws out words like the high horse in the room. It’s a divorce album, but one that isn’t angry; even after he screams “fuck that guy he’s just a piece of shit” on the title track, he reminds himself not to give into that anger. The track sounds like it’s going to explode, but it steadfastly refuses. Maybe that’s a representation of masculine repression; more likely, it’s a byproduct of an overly processed, flat production from Shawn Mendes collaborator Nate Mercereau.

Sonically, The Weakness is an album that feels trapped in a computer, aching for connection but unable to reach out. The multitracked vocals give even the more acoustic songs a metallic sheen, like he’s singing in time-stretched slow-motion. This leads to some awkward moments: For whatever strengths “St. Jupiter” and John Feldmann co-write “Holy Shit” have, they sound like Blues Traveler lead by a text-to-speech program. The drum programming from Mercereau is stiff throughout, clashing with the real instrumentation at every turn. Any time the album deviates from this weird electroacoustic hodgepodge, the record is at its best: the real drums on “Wicked Hands” give that song the power it needs, while “Dive” and “Mending Song” keeps things stripped back so the crescendos actually mean something.

I can’t stop thinking about three songs from this record: the title track, “Breakdown”, and “Michael Keaton”. Those songs, about mental health to varying degrees, tackle the subject in a more immediate, internal way than other folk-rockers like the comforting Bear’s Den or righteously angry Sam Fender. I’m instead reminded of last year’s The Banshees of Inisherin, a movie that explores male friendships in a specifically emotional way usually, wrongly, only limited to women. Embracing those influences leads to some stellar moments like album highlight “Breakdown.” It sounds like Natalie Imbrugila’s classic “Torn,” but within that Lilith Fair-adjacent framework depicts the masculine urge to hide your feelings and keep everything together even when you’re on “overdriiiiiiive.” (I will concede that the falsetto jump directly recalls Stephen Jenkins, noted male.) All the reference points make it it’s basically a perfect pop song — even the double tracked vocals feel like endearing pastiche, and the driving beat complements the fear of burning out instead of contrasting like most other happy-music-sad-lyrics songs do.

Pop culture references, as used by Boygenius — hi again! — and Wet Leg, often feel like commentary on finding your way in a world not built for you to reach the same status. It’s fascinating to hear Kelly use those references in the same way, though in the case of “Wicked Hands”, the Sufjan Stevens namedrop is an earnest tribute and not a playful jab. “Michael Keaton” goes in an entirely different direction with its reference. The chorus hinges on a question Kelly’s narrator poses while stoned on CBD: “If Michael Keaton killed himself in Multiplicity, would that be genocide”? It’s an amusing idea, the kind of one-liner that probably lines the notes apps of Demetri Martin and, well, Phoebe Bridgers, but it feels perfunctory; the line might as well ask about Birdman and avicide. I guess that’s the point, he is stoned after all, but then why not swap that chorus out and escalate it? Make it somehow meaningful? The gut-punch alternate chorus toward the end is too little, too late, because at this point, I’m more glad he finally got off the Michael Keaton thing.

I don’t know if this is all bullshit projection. There’s a rule among trans people that you can’t write about gender for at least two years after you come out, for Dunning-Kruger reasons, and I just passed that mark while still living 75% in boymode. I will say, as I transition, I feel increasingly outside the world of men even when people think I’m one. I don’t think I’m crazy to suggest everyone finds gender roles and expectations limiting to some degree; one of the biggest hits of last year was a decades-old song about wanting to cross that divide, or in Kate Bush’s words, exchange the experience. The Weakness sounds like someone banging on the walls, trying to reconcile his messy emotions and inhabit all sides of himself. I almost wonder how deliberate it is that Mercereau’s production won’t set him free.