The subject “young women on the move in the Berlin night” seems to be a popular one among the artists of this year’s festival. One proponent is Lia Lia and another—you guessed it—is Candice Gordon. Whereas Lia Lia’s night-roving accessories consist of ski goggles, super soakers, and gallons of gin, Candice Gordon beckons us from the same streets into very different pop-cultural outskirts. Nirvana shirts, Ramones shirts, stolen shopping trolleys, and nose piercings—these kids are ok, too. Rock instead of pop! It can be that easy. Candice Gordon was born in South Africa, and after a time in the swamps of the Okavangodeltas (we’re quoting freely from her biography here; sadly we don’t have any background information) moved on to Dublin, Ireland. In Dublin she joined a circus and met Shane MacGowan (the singer for The Pogues), who produced her first EP, Before the Sunset Ends. The eponymous song is described by a magazine called Hotpress as the “greatest song never to feature on the Twin Peaks soundtrack,” and this is an assessment we’d like to endorse. But there’s more to Candice Gordon than that—her spectrum ranges from delightfully shady exercises in kitsch to political garage rock songs like the newest single “The Kids Are Alt-Right.”

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