Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

they is the second song in a wider queer song cycle called a love is a love is a love. It is about the buzzing of anonymous encounters and the different faces one might meet (and take on) across a queer life. Where the first song dealt with intimacy between people known to each other (if only online), Vi Hu's text explores connection found among the anonymous many, evoking a flurry of night-time activity, heat and sex that dissolves at daybreak. To some listeners, this might conjure the world of cruising, saunas and hookups, and others might find very different resonances - eye contact made across a room at a queer event, brief overlaps between queer people. What is common is the fluttering excitement - and sometimes overwhelm - of these queer encounters, be these sexual or otherwise. Within the tapestry of different faces are also the ones we take on ourselves, presenting differently in each different encounter.

Amongst this throbbing energy, there are also quiet moments of connection - in this case, in a love duet sung between the bass and baritone voices. I hope these moments of contemplation, where norms are challenged, might allow us to see the world around us differently - if only for an instant.

The song places us in a world known only to the community experiencing it, and completely inscrutable to the outside world. In this sense, they is an ode to lives lived outside of heteronormative expectations.