distance.

“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.” —Anton Chekhov

Ari Voxx’s work has always been characterized by the question mark. Permanently discontent, eternally searching, and sparking with feverish desire, the D.C. indie pop fixture has long used her considerable vocal and compositional talents to challenge the status quo of her personal relationships. On her new playlist-ready bedroom pop statement, the aptly titled Distance EP, this hunger is focused into a single, razor sharp question: “why can’t we be together?” As she moves from lover to lover on her haunted dance floor, she can never seem to get close enough to scratch the itch of emotional (and occasionally, physical) connection.

Across a full length (last year’s I’m Okay, Please Stop Asking) and a handful of EPs and singles, Voxx and her band The Sad Lads have earned a rep for fusing a near-theatrical melodrama with infectious grooves and the warm glow of analog textures. Distance sees the group making another convincing case for crowning Voxx one of the next great bearers of the indie-dance-pop torch song in the vein of Robyn, Elizabeth Frasier, or Victoria Legrand. And this time, the group has a host of new tricks up their sleeves, underpinning her angst with a masterful genre-bending tour of electronic influences, shuffling from mode to mode as deftly and surprisingly as Voxx darts around her vocal range.

On Distance, the group’s classic synth-pop sound is refracted through styles ranging from chiptune to 90s rave, lending new excitement to Voxx’s attempts to work out her troubles. Distance’s seven tracks never settle into an aesthetic for too long before a bold scene change pulls your ears elsewhere. The vibey dialogue sample and torrid Parisian love affair of “Giovanni” to the PS1-era FM synthesis of “Sea Scorched (Siren)” and pseudo-jungle breakbeats of “Reeling,” Distance is a hazy reimagining of familiar sounds, covered in digital reverb and a lo-fi removal that reflects its core theme.

Throughout the album, Voxx wears her multi-media influences on her sleeve, showcasing her magpie-like tendency to draw inspiration from a wide variety of forms and unexpected places. “Giovanni” is a character study inspired by James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room that sees Voxx fusing an embodiment of the title character, a gay man in 1950s Paris, with her own lived experience. “Sea Scorched (Siren)” turns to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, using the symbol of the siren — both the mythological creature and the modern emergency beacon — to signify the double-edged sword of danger and allure. “Tender Feelings” is a reworking of Chara’s “Yasashii Kimochi,” a gentle 90s Japanese pop hit reimagined by Voxx and the Sad Lads in a sweet, charming update to close the EP.


At the center of the EP is the haunting tone poem “Interlude - Distance,” a noticeable departure from the big beats and cool hooks that just might hold the key to the album’s most central and disconcerting thematic conceits. The track features a very different Ari Voxx — vacant, robotic, expressionless — reminding us in spoken word of the gravity of this painful separation from those we love. Halfway through Distance’s journey, she hasn’t yet found a solution to the uncomfortable question at the EP’s core: when the things, people, places, and feelings we need are gone…what exactly is left?

- Braedan Henderson