It’s never too late to disassociate. So says New York City postpunk philosopher Gina Volpe on “Delete the World,” the latest track to drop from her debut solo album of the same name.
A hymn to the life-saving power of escapism, the song finds Volpe with daydreaming on her mind. A detuned, eighth-note chunky guitar riff ticks away like the steady march of time while the singer impatiently imagines missing out on a world that “could vaporize before our eyes.” Then everything explodes in an old-school rave-up that declares a path to victory over humdrum reality:
And I fall, then slide
Weightless like a dream
On top of earth goes by
Disappear into the blue again
Delete the world
Forget your plans
Let’s waste some time with idle hands
Delete the world
Delete the world
Like the other 12 tracks on this loose concept album, the song pushes back against what Volpe calls “the dubious assumption that humans are in control of anything. One of my favorite aphorisms is ‘relax, nothing is in control,’ which I actually find incredibly comforting,” she says.
It’s a creatively liberating modus operandi, too. While Volpe made her name as lead guitarist for seminal punk outfit the Lunachicks, and later furthered her street rep as the founder and frontwoman of power trio Bantam, her solo career—begun on 2017’s Different Animal EP—has seen her follow her muse basically wherever in the hell she feels like chasing it. The music she’s released under her own name has brushstrokes of indie pop, alt rock, ‘80s synth and heavy rock—any sound she hears in her head and can keep the forces of predictability at bay.
And she’s doing it largely on her own, having played every instrument on the new album save for the drums on six tracks (Jeremy Kinney on five of them, Sam Warfield on the other) and bass on two (by Bantam’s Doug Oosterhouse). Production is by Barb Morrison (Blondie, Franz Ferdinand), with mixing by Jonathan Jetter.
Most artists trying to establish themselves as a solo performer may be sticking to a stricter career path timeline but here, too, Volpe feels no need to toe somebody else’s line or adhere to any rigid timetable. Since coming off the road with Bantam in 2006, she’s pursued a million and one creative outlets, including scoring films, making visual art, composing and producing an off-Broadway show (Homo The Musical) and even doing the motion-capture modeling for the female guitarist and bassist in the video game Rock Band. Then there was the Lunachicks reunion in 2019, and a book she co-penned about the band in 2021, and a documentary in 2023 … well, let’s just say the time can fly by when you’ve cut the cord with obligation.
“I don’t have any creative overlords or collaborators to piss off, so I get to color outside the lines and be as messy as I wanna be,” she shrugs. Yes, there’s nothing quite like that feeling of truly letting go. Delete away, Gina.
