GLEET turn a loaded double standard against itself on new single ‘Strident’

On their latest offering ‘Strident’, experimental collective GLEET take aim at a term repeatedly deployed to diminish outspoken women, building a pointed and darkly comic piece from sampled voices, fractured rhythms and the simmering anger created by a double standard that refuses to disappear.

The single emerged during work on the group’s forthcoming album 'Thames Sea', a conceptual record imagining London gradually submerged by rising water. It ultimately sat outside that project’s narrative, but its isolation has given GLEET room to pursue a more immediate political argument. Compared with the dense collisions that define much of their self-described “scrunt”, ‘Strident’ is relatively spacious, allowing its voices and central provocation to land with greater clarity.

At the centre is an imbalance in language. A woman expressing a firm opinion can be labelled shrill, aggressive or unreasonable even when speaking calmly, while men promoting increasingly overt misogyny are often rewarded with audiences, authority and income. GLEET contrast those positions until restraint understandably gives way to fury. The line “I’ll show you fucking strident” functions as both punchline and release, reclaiming the insult by pushing it beyond the limits imposed upon it.

And that humour prevents the song from becoming a dry piece of commentary. GLEET have always approached serious subjects through absurdity, antagonism and a willingness to let sounds rub awkwardly against one another.

The result is confrontational, funny and deliberately irritated. Here, GLEET treat misogyny's persistence as the absurd and infuriating spectacle it is. In an age when some men are once again questioning women’s most basic political rights, ‘Strident’ sounds like the only reasonable volume left.

https://youtu.be/m9luxOs9w68?si=hAUNap1IazyR9CIN