Portions for Foxes: Housewife

"Portions for Foxes" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song by a woman or a band led by a woman. See the introduction for more.

I said I might do this, and I did.

No regrets; this is a song I love, and will push it out more than once just to have an excuse to listen to it one more time.

In a better world, this would be on its way to becoming the Gen Z anthem: Fuck Around Phase, by Housewife.

Housewife is now a one-woman band: Brighid Fry. It was originally a two-woman band called Moscow Apartment, but I gather "Moscow" became problematic, so the name changed in 2022, and then, later that year, the other woman (Pascale Padilla, who I hope turns up making other music) left the band.

I say "woman," because I went to Vassar, but the two of them were in their mid-teens when they formed Moscow Apartment in 2017. So there's also a "growing up in public" aspect to Housewife, which comes through like a bell in this great song.

Fuck Around Phase is, I think, a song about Padilla leaving the band:

Last year I wasn’t like this
Lost my balance and I fell hard
Wish I could blame it all on the circus
But you’re the only clown that gave me scars

The only accusations are the ones Fry throws at herself, the only complaints are the ones others make about her:

They say “Brighid Why’re you being an asshole”
Cuz Brighid wanna have a good time

It's a song intensely itself, perfectly titled, full of piss and vinegar and the arrogance of youth...and also the deep understanding that all of that is self-indulgent and transient, that there will be a reckoning not too far off. It's very close to being a self-refuting song, one that is both unrepentant and looking forward to the moment when this will all be a horrible, regrettable, memory.

But not yet. Not today. Today we are still in the Fuck Around Phase, and it is glorious.