Abby Sage makes gauzy folk-pop that evokes a romantic sense of decay, like a pink-wigged Marie Antoinette raking her finger through the frosting of a cake encrusted with maggots. Sage’s debut album, The Rot (Nettwerk), dropped in March, on the heels of one of last year’s biggest TikTok trends: bed rotting, which refers to staying in bed all day and doing as little as possible. The idea is that, if left to such inactivity indefinitely, you could decompose from it. Just the right amount, though, can be restorative. On The Rot, Sage moves through the emotional complexities of coming-of-age and its accompanying loneliness, change, and sexual awakening as if she’s slowly rotating a kaleidoscope: “Milk” sounds breezy and sweet despite its defiantly sour lyrics (“I wanna drink my milk in my own filth”); “Hunger” captures the tenderly rabid appetite of first sexual encounters; and “The Rot” advises you to “lean into the rot” and “fester like the fruit” as a form of rebirth. Her visceral, aching vocal delivery bestows upon her lines a magical potency that makes decomposing feel as transformative as it is ugly.
Though Sage is still growing into her sound, the visual aesthetics she uses to contextualize it are mature. She distinguishes her videos with the use of meticulously crafted papier-mâché elements, which sometimes make cameos at her concerts. Inspired by the fantastical world-building of Talking Heads circa Stop Making Sense and Florence & the Machine, Sage uses subdued color palettes and quiet settings, such as spacious rooms and open pastures, so that the elegant subtleties of her masks, puppets, props, and gestures really pop. Though her arty, earthy, feminine minimalism seems like it would appeal to would-be tradwives (and maybe it does), she’s hardly one to relinquish her voice to conform with tradition—or with anything else. In March, she withdrew from South by Southwest in support of a free Palestine, joining more than 80 artists protesting the festival’s ties to the U.S. armed forces and defense contractors who’ve been propping up Israel’s military. Sage is a musician with many faces, and she lives for beauty even through pain.
Abby Sage Wed 12/4, 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $18, 17+
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