Protest music often trades in broad stroke messaging born of group consensus. Red Ship, the new full length from Star Matriarch, is deeply personal protest music born of Carol Bui’s lived experience as an AuDHD mother of color and (former) sex worker under Imperialist capitalism. Melding syncopated world rhythms with abrasive post-punk instrumental explorations, the album  seethes with a palpable, raw humanity. A modernist, global link in the riot grrl chain, on Red Ship Star Matriarch has alchemized pain into potent, revolutionary, empowering art.

Today, Star Matriarch has unveiled the video for “You’re Free,” which can be found on Red Ship. Having Crypt Bar in Olympia, Washington as the backdrop, the video highlights Bui performing the single. The song swings with post-punk sound and powerful vocals.

Bui said of the single, “I wrote ‘You’re Free’ when I was a sex worker. It’s about being empowered by work that others expect me to feel shame for. I was paid well for the emotional and physical labor, in a world where patriarchy constantly demands it for free. There was power in my clients’ vulnerability. Their trust made me feel a little dangerous.”

The original version of the record was released in 2011 but was rife with Orientalist embellishments. “I was trying to capitalize on my own marginalization as an Asian American sex worker, but also with Red Ship. The white Eurocentric gaze got me initially, and it was all over the original release.”  Additionally, the social climate was, and still isn’t, kind to sex workers and thus, Bui didn’t feel safe in presenting the record as truly autobiographical. “So, I retracked all vocals, added some new guitars, had it remixed, augmented it with new material, and it’s being reissued with the help of one of my favorite feminist rabblerousers”, referring to Katy Otto, who runs Exotic Fever Records. This new iteration of Red Ship is raw, less Orientalist in instrumentation and theme, while Bui’s own personal stories are centered. The influence of Arabic dance shines still, expressed with a personal authenticity that wasn’t there before.

Weaving her punk roots with the immediate experiences of colonized femme-hood, expertly executed with a delicate balance of raw power and vulnerability, Red Ship is an empowering rock catharsis that rejects the shame prescribed for those asserting their agency. “The one thing that has always been missing for me personally from a lot of punk is feeling a personal connection to the stories” Bui explains. “I’m going to tell my truth. This was my truth. There’s this relentless message I hear that being Asian American, being a woman, that I’m supposed to be stoic and hard working. Not allowed to show big expressions of joy or of despair. This record is my answer to that, born of painful lived experience and the complexity of modern reality.”

The guitars are abrasive and pithy, the melodies are as ferocious as they are sweet, the rhythms viscerally primordial, and the words tell uncomfortable stories you probably haven’t heard. Reclaiming sexuality and radicalizing femininity, a huge part of Star Matriarch’s redefinition of strength is boldly declaring the right to feel her emotions fully and loudly – no matter how inconvenient they may be to the white, cishetero patriarchy.

From her boisterous drums that somehow suggest both post-hardcore and Levantine folk, her lyrical yet abrasive guitars, to her emotively robust voice, Star Matriarch displays the full spectrum of emotions born from her lived truth; sacred rage, disarming joy, deep grief, and spiteful celebration. A stunningly embodied record, Red Ship commands a fully somatic listening experience, challenging the limits of a supposedly dying genre.