I discovered Rabbit Fighter through the essay entry "Lessons Learned While Being a Patient with Vulvodynia" by Zoya in Tight Lipped's Opening Up zine. I was shocked to learn that a band wrote an entire album about vulvar pain, but knew I obviously had to hear it! It's taken me a few months to get back to writing the review, but here it is.
Rabbit Fighter is a female led group, with male members as well, formed back in 2017; kudos to them for supporting an album on female pain! The set up is Zoya Brou (vocals/guitar), Daniel Sayers (drums), Brook Theis (vocals/bass), and Matthew Tillson (guitar). They are based in Denver, Colorado, so not too far away from me. I would describe the music as pretty simple rock with indie sentiments and airy female vocals. Their Facebook page lists them as dream pop, power pop, jangle pop, indie rock, and riot grrl, so there you have it. The drums and bass lines are pretty basic and serve as the backbone to the driving points of the songs. The guitar parts also play along as a supporting act to the main focus, which the vocals, due to the serious nature of the lyrics, but the recording quality makes it kind of difficult to really hear them over the instrumentation. Without headphones it's pretty hard to understand the words, so I recommend plugging in to get the best version of Rabbit Fighter's half hour of power, and only album to date, "The Vulvodynia Guide to Dating", released in August of last year.
Their bandcamp page states that the album is influenced by:
"brutally honest singer-songwriters like Juliana Hatfield and Fiona Apple, and also by girl groups of both pop and punk like The Raincoats and The Shirelles.
In some ways it is a break-up album, but it is mostly a love letter and celebration of a marginalized self, through the embrace of an anarchistic philosophy toward a body and a mind that cannot conform to American, eugenics, and ableist ideals."
The album opens with "Parallel Worlds", a mourning tale of the yearning to connect but having a barrier standing between you. The 2nd track "Why Would There Not" gets right into discussing the reality of pelvic pain metaphorically by stating "chronic pain is metal. My pelvis is the head and the horns of the devil." I think many of us can relate to this sentiment. Zoya goes on to compare the pain to a razor and a knot as well, because we all know it depends on the day how your pelvic pain may present itself. She begs to be made to function, which is all too real. Despite how heavy of a topic Vulvodynia can be, especially in terms of how it affects your love/sex life, this album doesn't shy away from making jokes. I literally burst out laughing in the middle of the song "Electricity" when Zoya sings "don't brush up against me. I'll spark, I'll blow up your car," followed by "don't you fucking touch me. I'll just say oww," issuing a warning to a potentially interested person. I found this refrain particularly relatable to the early stages of seeing someone when you are trying to learn to trust them, yet fear getting close and having them unintentionally cause you physical pain. "Haunted House" has her repeating "no" over and over, a word those of us struggling with pain at the onset of intercourse can have difficulty speaking up and saying to our partner when we're in the middle of the act. "Letter to Skum" is an upbeat, punk number that has Zoya explaining to the person in question that she has the peer reviewed paperwork to prove her diagnosis and that she is, in fact, sane. It's a disheartening fact those of us suffering from chronic pain are used to, being not believed and told it's "all in our heads". The closing song "Boys", ends things with a bang as it starts with an acapella rounds of vocals singing the word over each other, then leads into a loud proclamation of how "boys never ask you what you like. They talk to each other all night about the things they like," which is a reality that many of us have had to come to terms with when dating penis owners. As much as we wish it weren't true, society has raised us all to believe that sex equals pleasure for men and tolerance for women. Overall, I think this album does an excellent job of summarizing the common experiences that those of us with Vulvodynia face in a relationship where the other person doesn't truly understand our pain and may have their own unrealistic expectations of how things should go. The raw lyrics paint a visual picture of the rage we tend to keep locked inside of us that needs a way out.
You can check out their music on Spotify or their bandcamp page, where you can purchase a cassette tape for $7 and see the lyrics for all of the songs (which I highly recommend reading along to while you listen). You can also like them on Facebook if you want to hear an acoustic version of "Parallel Words", watch their music video for "No Method", hear about upcoming shows, or other news. I applaud this band for doing something which hasn't been done before: addressing the oh so private issue of vulvar pain in a very public way with musical accompaniment. While I've begun writing a book about this, I haven't ever thought of writing songs about it and I must say, it's a great idea. We all have to find our own way to make light out of our difficult situations and I think they've found just the right way to do that for themselves.