Mary Ocher’s leftist politics have always been baked into her art. Her first record was called War Songs, and she has continuously interrogated militarism, capitalism, and nationalism across subsequent works, including her 2017 breakthrough, The West Against the People.
Recently, she’s even taken to performing karaoke-style renditions of some of her new repertoire live to avoid using backing tracks or laptops on stage, something she has described as “a wonderful icebreaker” and a “really, really great opportunity to talk about broader political subjects with the audience.”
In short, Ocher is a multi-hyphenate outsider artist who wraps sharp geopolitical reflections in peerless avant-pop packaging, as her latest…