Crush Fund – GO | Album Review
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Lonely Ghost Records
The stories that can be told about trans women have undergone a dramatic shift in the past decade. A landscape that was once dominated by tales of coming out has since given way to stories of drama, friendship, and love… but especially drama. Cat Fitzpatrick’s The Callout and Emily Zhou’s Girlfriends are two books capturing the complexity of relationships in communities filled with people discovering themselves. The former is a novel in verse detailing a messy web of love, lust, and hate between six trans women in the city. The latter is a collection of short stories about Gen Z women living in New York and the everyday interpersonal drama that defines being a mid-twenties woman; roommates who won’t do the dishes, messy one-off encounters at parties, and awkward trips home. Contrast this with the book that helped popularize modern trans literature in the early 2010s: Imogen Binnie’s Nevada, a story about a trans woman who lives in New York and has limited encounters with other trans women. The novel follows her destructive behavior and simple attempts to survive while staying true to her punk roots.
Since 2022, Crush Fund has explored this same delicious doll drama across their short but hard-hitting discography. The group’s most popular track, “Drama,” is like listening to your messiest friend gossip over lunch – easy to see how cramming that feeling into a two-minute punk track is nothing short of addictive. Members Nora Knox, Wendy Kya, Sean Kovacs, and July Brown also have a knack for putting on some of the most cathartic live shows I’ve ever seen, encouraging every crowd to exorcise their emotions, whether that’s frustration with a fling, anger at an ex lover, resentment toward your unaccepting parents, or just feeling fed up with how fucking hard it is to be trans. The band’s first full-length, GO, certainly does not abandon their obsession with drama, though as the album unfolds, Crush Fund are able to tap into some raw and honest rage, displaying their capacity to tackle all of the harsh realities of being a trans woman in 2026.
Photo by @Ashtray_angels
Opening track “GO” sets the stage expertly, making it clear this record is not quite the same fare that Crush Fund has previously delivered. The band evokes the usual touchstone of online drama as Wendy Kya sneers, “one of us is showing symptoms of the internet,” but as the track opens up, all members join in on some stellar gang vocals insisting “you're gonna have to go.” It closes with a memory of childhood and alludes to what lies ahead for the trans youth, a declaration that “this is one of the last times home will feel like home.” It becomes apparent this is the beginning for a trans woman who is fleeing an unaccepting home to head for New York, as painful and difficult as that may be.
Following the opener is a selection of three tracks which most closely align with the Crush Fund we’ve known so far – salacious and drama-obsessed. A highlight is the track “OPEN SECRET,” which dials up the paranoia and petty drama to eleven. The joyfully saccharine whistles at the beginning bring Crush Fund together as DIY’s most sardonic cheerleaders. The synth takes center stage, providing the most danceable melody on the LP as the track lays bare the frustrations with rumors and drama in online trans spaces. Yet it's clear that Crush Fund feel a gravitational pull toward messy drama, maybe even a reverence, as infuriating as it may be. Each of these tracks provides the perfect push pit soundtrack; they’re simply too fun to believe these girls truly hate the drama they sing about.
Shifting their focus to more traditional emo fare, Crush Fund penned two excellent songs about heartbreak, “ILY IHY” and “BURN IT ALL.” “ILY IHY” is a standout, with a bouncy, anthemic guitar melody and a chorus designed for the heartbroken fan: “I love you, I hate you, I miss you, no fuck you.” This track also previews what is to come later on this record, as Kya puts her capacity for absolutely crushing vocals on display, layered over a breakdown that makes this reviewer want to crowdkill someone.
Continuing to show their range, the sullen (and intentionally lowercase) “the dream” marks a tone shift. The gang vocals disappear. The instrumentation is stripped down to a lonely acoustic guitar. The lyrics are deeply haunting: “the public parks are being watched by quiet men with guns.” The song closes, warning the listener, “if you wait too long, your body will forget the dream it had.” And suddenly the dream is over, as immediately following this is a three-song run of hardcore tracks, delivering intense tonal whiplash as the album drives into the tragic core of trans existence.
There is no subtlety here. “SHOOTING II” begins with heavy feedback and a rising growl as Kya roars “I will never feel safe in public again!” Immediately the song transitions to “FFS” and its slow, tension-filled drum beat, the kind that signals to any hardcore kid that it’s time to absolutely fuck shit up. Suddenly, the lines “Forever for our sisters, forever for our hearts, forever for the ones we loved and the ones we lost” break through, screamed with such intensity that you hope Kya was able to recover her voice after. The track then opens wide, the guitars crashing down, imploring the listener to start dancing in their room. “SHOOTING I” explicitly names what has wrought so much pain and horror on the members of Crush Fund, referencing the 2022 shooting at the Colorado Springs queer club, Club Q, in which five people were killed, and 25 were injured.
It is here that Crush Fund diverges from the drama-obsessed stories of the modern trans woman. They (correctly) recognize that the role of a trans punk band is to get loud and get angry about the endless hate that trans people endure. This year alone, at least 36 trans people that we know of have lost their lives in the United States, either as a result of murder or taking their own lives.
Bringing the listener down from the intensity of those three tracks is the album closer, “bloody nose.” A friend of mine talks about how being trans is a series of small humiliations. Crush Fund understands this, with the refrain of “every bloody nose you get is unique.” Trans people are always being hurt. It is being misgendered at the store, it is being forced to use a deadname, it is being stared at in public. And despite this, you will always find trans people “sucking clotted blood out between [their] teeth.” Through every bloody nose and every injustice, trans people must find a way to dust themselves off and soldier onwards.
Photo by @Ashtray_angels
GO provides the soundtrack for the modern trans woman navigating life. The woman who feels enveloped in beef, obsessing over Twitter posts and who said what about who. The woman who has her heart torn out by a messy t4t relationship. The woman who has to be suddenly and brutally reminded that she is a member of a highly oppressed group of people who are targeted on the regular simply for existing. Crush Fund deftly moves between all of these emotions. They give trans women a space to mosh, to get out all of their pent-up frustration toward a world that simply wants to see them fail. I have never seen such an overwhelming display of energy, both joyful and wrathful, than seeing them play at Liberation Weekend earlier this year.
After fighting through all of the trials and tribulations that trans people must deal with, gritting their teeth through the pain, the album closes on what is perhaps the greatest tragedy for many trans people. Relating back to the opening track “GO,” Knox sings “I cracked, and I called home to no answer.” When dealing with the everyday horrors we face, we can’t return home to safety. There is only the ability to go forward.
Caroline Liaupsin is a DC area radio host and musician. She’s live every other Tuesday from 2–4 PM EST on WOWD-LP bringing you the hottest new DIY tracks, interviews with artists, show previews, and features on the world of DIY in DC and beyond. When she’s not too busy she writes biweekly DIY show previews and other things on her substack. She also plays bass for a trans cowpunk band thisdogllhunt.
