Joy Guidry’s work has a cathartic power to it that condenses into heavy, affecting passages that spill into the air from every direction. Guidry’s forthcoming album, Radical Acceptance, is a journey and on the first single, “Inner Child,” the past still hurts, but it doesn’t define the next steps forward. In describing their practice of radical acceptance, Guidry says, “The most important thing I’ve had to teach myself is that there is nothing wrong with my body or my brain. My body is fat, and I struggle with my mental health daily, and neither of those things makes me any less of a human being.”
On “Inner Child,” lilting bassoon passages fragment and disperse into their own pathways. Raucous percussion exudes an ancient energy as it infuses with the simmering, feathery laments. A lightness emerges the feeling of finding ourselves whole again, or for the first time, shining above the gentle cadence. Guidry accents these soft, pensive moments with high-frequency bassoon screeches and wails, a sharp reminder that even as we find this acceptance and build better lives, there’s still pain to work through along the way.
As Marshall Trammel writes of the album, “Radical Acceptance is an interpersonal healing narrative carrying the ethos of a warrior that is responsive and inspiring community accountability. Radical Acceptance presents both the warrior and their ecology of a disciplined, mind tempest.” This music is vulnerable in its truth, powerful in the space it creates. “Inner Child” is a beautiful invitation into Guidry’s world of Radical Acceptance.
Joy Guidry is a finalist for the 2021 Berlin Prize for Young Artists taking place in Berlin, Germany in January 2022. Radical Acceptance is out on February via Whited Sepulchre. Pre-order below.
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