INTRODUCING: Teri Gender Bender
“I would personally describe my music as strong yet soft to someone who has never heard it before,” TERI GENDER BENDER explains. The Denver-born singer’s real name is Teresa Suárez Cosío, who is best-known for being the frontwoman of punk band LE BUTCHERETTES, as well as her solo project, TERI GENDER BENDER. Her description of her music is spot on. Throughout her fourteen EPs that have been released as part of her solo project, the music jumps from acoustic to groovy new-wave and punk- to name but a few genres that she confidently makes herself at home. Her latest EP, Outsiders, has an extended edition that is coming out, which includes a bonus track that didn’t make the original cut.
However, her start out in the music industry was anything but easy. She lived in Denver until she was thirteen, which was when her father passed away from a heart attack. She returned to Mexico with her mother and two younger brothers, where she founded LE BUTCHERETTES with drummer Auryn Jolene at the age of 17. The band are still going to this day, and are beloved in the punk scene. But the rise of Teri‘s solo career was “a gradual path in the making without knowing it in the moments of my songwriting.”
She elaborates, “it was never really a plan to go solo until somewhere during the pandemic. The isolation turned into solitude and it helped me let go of LE BUTCHERETTES as my only sole identity, as it was taking over my life, as it was going at full speed, non-stop touring and we had just released new music but it was all put to a halt when the pandemic came.”
The pandemic undoubtedly turned all our lives upside down. However, for some people, spending time at home made them rediscover their purpose in life. That was the case for Teri, who – despite facing challenges due to the first lockdown – also found time to hone in on her solo project.
“Like many people, I came across so many mental hurdles (and blessings) that just having a new purpose made me look forward to just living in the present and not force anything anymore with anyone,” she explains. “Along with that came the built in courage of moving forward with it and making it tangible for my team. I am happy and grateful for their support.”
She released fourteen EPs in quick succession, which was “due to a spiritual necessity for myself, selfishly, to want to release them all, to let them go, to move on.” She explains how the EPs came about, which was due to the support of her record label. “Initially during the pandemic, while organizing and deep cleaning the cat hair out of my closet, I found some of my old (unaccounted for) hard drives. Surprised, I rushed to the computer, plugged them up, opened them up one by one and rediscovered that I had 60+songs/ideas/demos in there in each drive. There were five hard drives in total. My label, Clouds Hill, suggested the idea of me releasing however many EPs as I was comfortable enough to share and it ended up being a beautiful run of 14 EPs in total! That is how supportive my label is. It is also amazing to just release all that music (so far) within a span of a year. That is how professional they are. They were not overwhelmed with the workload, and were patient and motivating throughout the whole process. It takes a village, it is said, and it was proven true!”
However, she decided to not release the songs in chronological order. On each EP, there are old and new songs. Teri explains that she did this because “upon revisiting the old tracks and demos in my hard drive, I noticed how different all the songs were, which was why I decided to release the old material all scattered around, so the songs on the EPs have not been done in chronological order, as a way of blending the old with the ‘new old’.”
The latest of her EPs is called Outsiders, and it has an attention grabbing cover art of a foot against a bright pink background. The meaning behind it is rather poignant, but also empowering. “I have always felt like a foot (in a metaphorical sense),” she explains. “It must be an unconscious feeling I have about my sense of self. It also represents to me how subservient of nature I am but also strong and can carry the weight of the body. Now, I was born with flat feet, so they were seen as weak, a burden. This was also due to having a flat footed brain. I would alienate myself in academic/social events only to further lose ‘my sense of self’ in the comfort of identifying as a foot; something that is archless, bony and ugly. But now I am proud this shame. I can continue learning through happiness and acceptance instead of the pain or the un-comfort. There is light in darkness and there is darkness in light too.”
This message is prevalent in all of Teri‘s songs. But there are a few messages in particular that she hopes people will take away from her music. “I hope that whoever listens to my music feel that they are seen and not alone. Hopefully it inspires them to feel sexy, to feel empowered. Hopefully my music is also a tool for solitude’s comfort sake. You’ve gotta dream big too!”
TERI GENDER BENDER is proof that dreaming big can change things. But it’s not just dreaming big; life also has a funny way of proving that everything happens for a reason.
Outsiders is out now via Clouds Hill.
Follow TERI GENDER BENDER on Instagram.