Tony & The Kiki: “Extra Express”

“Shave your head, bind your chest / Male pronoun-ed, but wear a dress / Pompadour, high heel shoes / You were meant to break the rules,” Anthony Alfaro, frontperson of Tony & The Kiki, declares in the first lines of the new single, “Extra Express.” A bilingual celebration of queerness and freedom, full of joy and rage, the song is the opening track to their debut EP, Light It Up.

“I envision The Extra Express as a vehicle that takes us from this very ‘real’ three-dimensional terrestrial place to a land of glamour, joy, love, and light. As the engine revs, we kick up glitter into the faces of crusty old systems that intend to hold us down,” Alfaro says. “It’s glam, joyous, magical, and ass shaking. I think of it as ‘The Kiki Manifesto’… a mission statement, an invitation to live fully and boldly.”

The single is accompanied by the band’s first official music video. Directed by Doug Fitch and Tommy Nguyen, Alfaro describes it as, “Dorothy stepping into Oz… a psychedelic welcoming into the land of The Kiki and an introduction to all of its high vibrations and radiant queer magic.”

Light It Up is a slinky synthesis of intergalactic glam rock, ’70s disco-funk, and psychedelic folk, a glittering pièce de résistance filled with buzzsaw guitars, cacophonous drum beats and vintage synths, designed by artists of today looking back at their rock and roll ancestors with stars in their eyes, while also throwing some shade at the current state of the genre. “Rock and Roll was invented by queer people of color like Little Richard and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and yet there is a still such a lack of representation in the genre,” Max Vernon, the group’s resident “record-producing synth witch” states. “But everyone is invited to come hang at our kiki.”

Born and raised in Queens, NY, Alfaro cut their teeth working for artists like Gloria Estefan (touring with the Miami Sound Machine)— now, the “Genderf*ck Latine Rock and Roll Bruje” is finally ready to stand in their own light. They are backed by Vernon, guitar-shredding Jersey Shore punk Junior Pauls, bass guitar sorceress Yuka Tadano, queer druid key-master Rodney Bush, stoic drummer Tristan Marzeski, and background vocalists Sophia Ramos, Cherrye Davis and Gianna Masi.

Recorded at the seminal Dreamland in Woodstock, NY, and produced by Vernon (composer/lyricist for the Broadway-bound musical, KPOP) over the course of a three-day weekend, the band cranked out Light It Up, excavating the treasure trove of vintage instruments at the famous recording studio. This included a Hammond B3 organ, Moog synthesizer, Mellotron, clavinets, an antique Wurlitzer piano, guiro, congas, maracas, taiko drums, sleigh bells and an old toy piano.

The EP is tailored to accentuate Alfaro’s hyper-androgynous rock-star swagger and Rolling Stone-ready façade, paired with a vintage Bob Mackie-inspired jumpsuit and purple python platforms. Songs like the bright and booming “Paranoid” emphasize the electrifying peculiarity of the band, conjuring a strange white magic with its fusion of blues-rock and progressive rock with glints of ‘80s hair-metal and post-grunge riot grrrl spirit. But then there are some songs that blindside with ravishing splendor: The EP ends with a simmering slow burn of the power ballad “Listen,” an ethereal, astral-bodied call-to-arms and a lighters-in-the-air victory lap for Alfaro and the band.

But don’t let sentiment scare you. “Tony & The Kiki is the clack of seven-inch platform boots on Queens Boulevard, the summer sun hitting your sequin dress and turning the space around you into a discotheque,” Vernon says. “It’s beads of holographic sweat on your forehead from dancing all night after someone put a drop of LSD in your Agua Fresca.”

Light It Up is a rhinestone studded, psychedelic declaration: this is only the beginning bitch.