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Readers of a certain age will remember the classic Memorex ad campaign centered around the tagline: “Is it live or is it Memorex?”
The message was meant to highlight the superior audio of the VHS and cassette tapes from the now-defunct technology company. But it accidentally put forth a much deeper quandary that’s even more resonant today: “What is real anyway?”
Vacancy Chain’s Ashley Altadonna ended up wrestling with the latter question when she set out to write a song that was nothing but queries. “I was thinking about how memories are unreliable,” she explained. “What we think we remember might just be a story we've created in our minds. In this age of deep fakes and artificial intelligence, how do we know what's real and what's made up?”
When her mind jumped back to those vintage advertisements, she had her title. As for the lyrical content of “Memorex,” Altadonna achieved her goal of a question-mark-laden track that wound up spanning a few different aspects of her life, from touring to gender stereotypes to anxiety and insomnia:
Was it Ohio or Illinois?
Is it a girl or a boy?
What does it matter anymore?
Is this something you enjoy?
Are you getting enough sleep?
Does it come naturally?
Is this how it’s supposed to be?
Why are you asking me?
Propelling Altadonna through each question is her jangly guitar, along with a rock-solid bass line from Michael Agustin and the crisp percussion of Emily Agustin. Putting aside a traditional chorus, the trio are content to just open things up and get loud between verses, letting every conundrum hang in the air unanswered — particularly that final one.
As Altadonna put it, “I don't have any answers to why things are the way they are.”
What she and her Vacancy Chain bandmates know for sure is that “Memorex” will land on their Is This How It’s Supposed to Be? EP when it comes out this Friday, March 20. They’ll celebrate with release shows at Chicago’s Illuminated Brew Works on March 21 and Milwaukee’s Irving Place Records on March 26.
In the meantime, enjoy “Memorex” anytime using the player at the top of the page and catch it spinning on 88Nine throughout today (6:30 and 10:30 a.m.; 2:30 and 6:30 p.m.).
