“Hot & Mean” dropped into the giant mailbag at our START-TRACK offices (conveniently located near the best rest stop on the Information Superhighway), and upon researching the Brooklyn-based Eliza Edens, I found a bunch of my colleagues were already big fans of theirs and followers of their Instagram. So y’all decided to hold out on your old dog Will here, huh? I see how it is.
In any case, it’s about time we all got familiar with Edens’ work, because they are about to drop their first full-length album in four years. Death Drive, out October 30th, marks a return to songs that capture the urgency of life and all its passions, with songs that ooze grit, sweat, funk, and heat. This follows a period of records and songs that have dug deep into the pit of despair: Edens wrote 2022’s We’ll Become The Flowers after a breakup and their mom’s diagnosis with a neurodegenerative disease, and 2025’s it’s your birthday and you’re gorgeous was a collection of voice memo demos released to mark their mother’s passing.
On Death Drive, Edens write about what it feels like to stand on the precipice between pleasure and pain, documenting the human instinct towards recklessness and self-destruction in moments of distress. The album also showcases emotions related to Edens exploring their queerness for the first time, and many of the songs have that feeling of raw passion and trepidation. There is sex and desire but also anxiety, friendship and late-night laughter but also loneliness.
“Hot & Mean” captures all those feelings, describing romances which leave Edens all jumbled up, tying knots in their stomach like too many questionable Costco free samples. “I can get anything I want,” Edens sings, relating being single and queer to walking through one of the massive wholesale stores where anything and everything is available. But they ask themselves: “So why am I so down?” The title “Hot & Mean” doesn’t just relate to dating one person; it relates to the queer dating experience in general. To paraphrase MUNA’s Katie Gavin, “It gets so hot”, at least when you find someone who makes you feel good. But most of the time, you get left out in the cold, alone and left to your own feelings and devices, and that can be so mean.
A little bit bluesy and funky, akin to Lucy Dacus, Brandi Carlile, Sharon Van Etten, or Waxahatchee: “Hot & Mean” is a fantastic preview of what’s to come on Death Drive later this month. I’m sure we’ll talk about the album more in-depth when it drops. Meanwhile, check out the music video for “Hot & Mean” below, which features Edens and friends (Marin Day, Sofia Franklin, Maddie Hopfield) in Prospect Park. (At least I’m pretty sure that’s Prospect Park. I did almost a decade in Brooklyn and I’d recognize those trees any day.)
Written by Will Sisskind
