Emma Goldman: The Dispossessed

With her 1974 novel The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin crafted a radical vision of anarchist futures and existential exile. Utopian sci-fi, the text follows a physicist named Shevek who departs an anarchist moon in pursuit of interterrestrial collectivism.

The brutal irony of collective alienation under hegemonic oppression is the driving provocation of Vancouver screamo punk band Emma Goldman’s debut full length. Packaged under the sloganeering banner of all you are is we, the album’s title was directly inspired by a speech Shevek delivers in the novel.

“He’s talking to the masses in this capitalist planet that are interested in revolution, and he’s telling them, you have nothing, you only have each other. So to do anything in this world meaningful, you can’t think about the things you have or the distractions that you consume,” says singer Victoria Brindise. “You have to look to one another. Because that’s all you have.”

Speaking to New Feeling from somewhere between Toronto and Hamilton, Brindise and the rest of the band — which also includes guitarist Félix Ruiz de la Orden, bassist Hayley Schmidt, and drummer Pavel Ganapolsky — are packed into a van for their first tour of so-called eastern Canada. 

Released by Zegema Beach Records this past April, all you are is we splices breathless, pummeling skramz tirades with interludes fueled by ASMR, spoken word, breakbeat and gabber (a pulverizing Dutch offshoot of Europe’s colonization of Detroit techno that originally gained popularity amongst working-class youth in early ’90s Rotterdam). 

Popular internet personality Anthony Fantano reviewed the album, and a number of critics have celebrated its modernism, drawing comparisons to the genre-breaking sensibilities of Refused’s The Shape of Punk To Come many along the way. In June, it cracked the top ten of Exclaim!’s list deliberating the 25 best albums of the year so far.

“I remember seeing on some Facebook group — I think it was Skramz Cave — somebody said, ‘Oh no, with Fantano sharing Emma Goldman all the normies are gonna listen to the music,” Ganapolsky recalls. “Then somebody said, ‘no, they’re too harsh and gay.’“

The band’s chaotic collage crossover has punters lining up, but are they getting it?

Part of the album’s appeal is its big tent anarchism. After 26 minutes cataloguing everything from the overdose crisis and generational wealth to the violent gentrification of real estate over mathy guitar leads, double kick drums, and layered screams, the album’s title phrase features prominently in the chorus of album finale “bellinis at the blockade,” where it’s employed as a fullthroated, perfectly pit-primed slogan.

“A lot of the record is a very disjointed, piecemeal collage of all these terrible things that we all go through in late stage capitalism, and then at the end is kind of a more uplifting lyric,” Ruiz de la Orden reflects. Schmidt suggests, “It’s like when there’s a forest fire and there’s all those plants that grow first because they depend on the nitrate to thrive.” 

Subtitled An Ambiguous Utopia, The Dispossessed denies readers a promise of idyllic arrival.  “bellinis” and its depiction of militant joy, mutual care, and imperfect solidarity similarly suggests a liberated ecology is only accessible through decentralized empathy and infinitely active dialectical mediation — scare quotes performing the heavy lifting of a meta-critique: “‘get up’ / from the pit the choir is chanting / ‘show up, fake it / all you are is we.’”

“Every reading [of the record] is valid,” Brindise says.

Operating under the same name as the historical anarchist philosopher Emma Goldman is good shorthand, but the band says it’s also an ideological bridge.

“Usually at our shows there’ll be at least one person that’s like, ‘Which one of you is Emma Goldman?’” Brindrise reflects. “That’s an opportunity to spread the word.”

The band bolsters that educational impulse at the merch table. Local shows typically feature materials from anarchist resources like Dumpster Fire Distro or Anarchist Network of Vancouver Island, while a gig in the BC capital featured a table promoting Victoria Fare Evaders, a direct action group organizing against the “Fare Awareness and Enforcement” campaign BC Transit launched amid fare hikes in July. 

The band might even pursue tour management for future tours so they “can spend some time reaching out to these organizations and integrating that more,” Ganapolsky says.

Testing out new material on the road, they’re also decentralizing their songwriting, letting audience response shape composition and overall structure. Nearing the end of the tour, the group is also toying with the idea of releasing the stems for all you are is we.

“We’ve always wanted to do a remix album,” Ruiz de la Orden says.

Everything is for everyone, and nothing for themselves.