The Dad Rock That Made Me a WomanThe Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman

"In 2007, Pitchfork writer Rob Mitchum described the indie rock band Wilco's new work as "an album of unapologetic straightforwardness. Sky Blue Sky nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise." The "dad rock" descriptor hit a nerve, as indie peers like The National, Spoon, and the Mountain Goats, as well as generational forebears like Bruce Springsteen, were soon slapped with the same label. Meanwhile, Niko Stratis was 25 years old, a closeted trans woman who cut glass for a living in the Yukon Territory, and her stereotypically masculine environment was so threatening and miserable she contemplated faking her own death. Things would get even worse for Stratis, but she continually found solace and self in dad rock, this "radio friendly rock music with a deep emotional core." She connected with Michael Stipe lyrics alluding to his queer longings, John Darnielle's unabashed nerd-dom, and Springsteen's "very trans" desire to "change my clothes my hair my face." She found some of the same ideas in the work of Sheryl Crow, Neko Case, and Sharon Van Etten--"women who make the same emotionally open and honest music." In this book, she unpacks a label that seems frivolous on the surface in order to reveal "a more complex and varied genre that defies gender in subtle and beautiful ways." A genre that, by her own admission, saved her life"--