Reinvention is second nature to Romy Hoffman, who briefly played guitar in Noise Addict in the mid-’90s before becoming the cryptic, Kill Rock Stars-signed rapper Macromantics last decade. Since then she’s assembled the dark synth-pop project Romy, dueted under her own name and dabbled in art. Hoffman’s latest incarnation is A Gender, the self-described “sincere scuzzy paranoid punk” outlet in which she writes, plays, records and mixes everything. Her 20-minute debut manifests as short, brittle riffs on random phrases and raucous noise. Her lyrics can be hard to discern, whether souped in effects or curdled into a bratty sneer. The drumming is relentless, and the whole palette overdriven and thickly layered.

A Gender - Logo by Mess+Noise

Punk may be her aim, but even this concentrated outburst shows Hoffman’s itch to branch out. The sex-on-the-brain ‘Patience’ spikes its Buzzcock-isms with carousel melodies, while the more intelligible but silly ‘Anemic’ (“Don’t be anemic/Be my girlfriend”) dovetails into new wave. ‘Shoot’ is more garage-y, ‘Agree’ nearly overdoses on its distortion throb and ‘Less’ tries layered vocals and an electronic pulse. For all the claustrophobic chaos of ‘Dirty Laundry’, the closing ‘TSNR’ is the weirdest and most intense track. It sets its nightmare hardcore grind to hissed vocals, the song’s title an acronym for the departing threat, “Thou shall not return.”

Despite the battler attitude on display, Hoffman doesn’t strip away artifice here but ramp it up. The punk heart of her songs is obscured and scrambled in delivery. There’s nothing wrong with that, but along with the album title and Hoffman’s extreme multitasking, it makes A Gender more of an exercise than a band.

by Doug Wallen