As a teenager, your biggest concerns may include embarrassment in front of peers, family structural stability, and romantic relationships. As an adult, your biggest concerns are likely similar. Another teenage fear might be someone finding your journal, reading your deepest joys and terrors of personhood. The second album from Portland’s Nonbinary Girlfriend realizes that fear, listening like an evolutionary confessional of what it is to be a human in the 21st century.
IM NOT PRETTY’s lyrics could be journal entries by anyone who has woken up next to a partner not knowing why, felt detached from their lives and bodies due to circumstances out of their control, experienced assault, or heard a part of themselves incessantly say, “You’re not enough.” Anyone with trauma—processed or otherwise—will hear themselves in IM NOT PRETTY, and gain insight into how others deal with the weight of existence.
A military kid hailing most recently from Illinois, Nonbinary Girlfriend lead singer and songwriter James Binkowski ended up in Portland, subsequently writing music and starting Nonbinary Girlfriend because the energy of the city and its DIY scenes were calling. James, initially coming to Portland to trim weed, saw Mt. Hood peering over the town and said, “Let me grab my bags.”
Starting the band as a solo project in 2021, James chose the Nonbinary Girlfriend moniker as a reflection of how he identified gender-wise at the time. “My gender has evolved since then,” James explains. “It’s kinda funny having this ‘girlfriend’ still in there.” Time and evolution never stop, and neither are linear. Transition happens, and detransition can happen. Pain happens, and healing can happen. Nonbinary Girlfriend are after evolution and psychic healing, even as the girlfriend layer is shed in the process.
Eric Diamond and Sei Harris joined Nonbinary Girlfriend as it evolved from a solo project into a band. Though Sei isn’t in the band anymore, Eric continues holding it down on drums, and—as of last April—Pete Bensen plays guitar in the project. Both are involved in other Portland bands including Mega Pacific, Simple Shapes, and Bug Séance. When asked about the lineup, Eric quips, “It’s pretty fluid, just like our gender.” An easy laughter ensues, one manifesting only between friends and creative partners that have been through the trenches together, coming out on the other side of tours, recording, and songwriting with an almost intrinsic sense of connection between them.
Such bonds are needed when writing, recording, and playing an album like IM NOT PRETTY. As the sole songwriter, some of James’ most personal experiences are the brightest points of relatability and catharsis on the album. With the title IM NOT PRETTY, before a single note is heard, James rejects society putting him in a “pretty” box. As with the title, the album art evokes a queer taking-back of self through local artist Eilish Gore’s powerful portrait, a reimagining of James as Joan of Arc. The battle icon has haunted James for years. Nonbinary Girlfriend copped their chainmail aesthetic from the queer ancestor, who James channels as a medieval T-Boy (trans-masc boy).
On self-sabotaging breakup anthem “Oh God,” James displays his PJ Harvey vocal range and control, asserting he’s fucked up for not missing his ex, a deeply nuanced grief rubbing up against the joy of freedom and autonomy. The song’s breakdown is pure catharsis when James, dropping deep down in his vocals, asks “When will I figure it out?” before admitting he doesn’t like what’s good for him. Like most of us, James is figuring life out as it happens.
The album’s title track and first single make clear what the band thinks of frameworks still used by the male gaze to size up trans people, women, and queers: “I’m not pretty / I am fucking scary / I’m not pretty / You are fucking scared of me.” Processing events that happened to him, James confronts the concept of consent—or lack thereof, how AFAB (assigned female at birth) teenagers are expected to give their bodies to those who want it, and how those bodies are sometimes taken without consent. The song is profoundly angry, holding space for those who have experienced something similar and a knife to the throat of assailants worldwide.
When asked what the band hopes people get out of the album, James says he wants listeners to experience what he did: “The time and space to process what they’ve been through and feel not alone.” Pete adds, “When you write music that’s relatable to a lot of people, once you put that music out, it doesn’t belong to you anymore.” Each person comes to the table with their entire life in tow, informing how they relate to the music and its messages and stories.
Clocking in just shy of 27 minutes, IM NOT PRETTY’s track listing is lean and mean. “Bully” reckons with the waking nightmare that can be step-parents, the visceral breakdown in “Stranger” walks us through the valley of the shadow of death that is a drawn-out breakup, “Shame Spiral” simulates a spin-out in all directions, and the slow churn bass of “Secret Song” grapples with not being the “woman” someone needs. Over and over, the tracks drive home that James’ most potent form of processing is songwriting.
IM NOT PRETTY’s final track, “Do What You Want,” features the hardest shredding intro of the album, leaving the listener wanting more and inevitably starting the whole album over again. It also feels like the final nail in the coffin of the relationships that have been dogging James for years. Lovers, partners, friends, and family all have the capacity to manipulate, and Nonbinary Girlfriend is done with that. James tells those who have wronged him to do what they want—because that’s exactly what he plans to do.
Nonbinary Girlfriend releases their sophomore album, IM NOT PRETTY, on Friday, February 13 via prolific Portland label Pleasure Tapes. Pick up a tape or digital download on Bandcamp. Nonbinary Girlfriend also celebrate the release of IM NOT PRETTY at Coffin Club on February 13 with openers Myriads and Femme Cell, more info here.
