Music Makers

merch review: Eden Lonestar's "bubblecrush daydream" perfume

Music merch: making the immaterial material, since, well, whenever people started to make music merch I guess? (Baz Luhrmann's Elvis suggested it might be the titular Elvis, let's go with it for Baz's sake.) Not only are we in a new and exciting era of wearable merch, in which it is no longer abjectly uncool to wear a band's merch to the band's gig—Bandsplain podcast host Yasi Salek recently demonstrated this in a Substack about seeing Oasis at Wembley—but band merch creators are also thinking far outside the bun and getting creative with their items. I myself am the proud owner of Jenny Lewis tarot cards and a Mitski combination lock from the Be The Cowboy era ("Free The Cowboy.")

When I saw that alt-pop artist Eden Lonestar had created a special PERFUME as limited edition merch for her new self-titled album, I was extremely excited—I've been a huge fan of her music since interviewing her for The Alternative when she performed under the name Lynden Rook. Eden Lonestar is an album as brutal as it is beautiful: dense guitars crush crystalline electronic elements into an iridescent powder that sorta hangs in the air, industrial structure supports diaphanous melody, you know what I'm talking about, you know the vibes. Hard music, soft music, coming together to melt your brain just so. "222l888444" is a real heartbreaker and the drums on "guillotine" are bonkers.

The perfume is called "bubblecrush daydream" and was created through the cosmetics company O'Douds, based in Eden Lonestar's home base of Houston, Texas; it promises notes of cotton candy, bubblegum, and fruit.

I have been nursing a passion for perfume for a few years. I think it fills a similar space as my previous passion for ballet, where I'm prostrate in front of a ginormous wave of classical intel, and I will never absorb it all, but I love what I get to dabble in. So I am not educated enough to be a true "fraghead," but I love reading about perfume and learning about perfume. (Big fan of the newsletter eat your lipstick, RIP to the incredible gay perfume podcast Top Notes.) I also think writing about perfume now is what writing about music used to be before you could access music on your phone/computer—in the absence of being able to play/smell the song/scent immediately, you have to take the writer's word for it.

"bubblecrush daydream" is a roll-on perfume, as much of a gourmand (that would be a scent designed to smell like something edible) as its description implies, but the combo of the fruitiness and the sugar makes it sophisticated rather than kid stuff.

On New Year's Eve I went to a party at a house in a neighborhood I would describe as "kind of underneath Dodger Stadium" and someone brought a special snack. They described the snack as Sour Patch Grapes. These were mixed green and red grapes that had been frozen, then rolled in a sour grit reminiscent of the coating of those piquant little gummy guys we all know and love. I asked the snack-giver how they made the Sour Patch Grapes...I can't remember exactly but I believe citric acid was involved? Incredible stuff, refreshing and zippy. "bubblecrush daydream" has Sour Patch Grapes vibes.

The other reference I have for the scent is ephemeral/digital, which makes sense given Eden Lonestar's music. A few months ago I got quite disturbed by my IG explore page, which was clearly trying to show me lots of demoralizing content and maximum feminine rage bait (celebrity plastic surgery, unflattering angles of pop star performances). I tried an experiment where I 'trained' my explore page to show me only dessert recipes, liking a Reel of a delicious chocolate treat, then liking others that popped up in their wake, until my entire page was pretty much dessert.

One video haunts me, which is a recipe video for "lemon brownies." The format is "brownies" (dense, fudgy texture) but the flavor is "lemon." It's a mindfreak in that I think of brownies as both a structure and a flavor (chocolate) and I enjoy rolling around the contradiction in my mind, especially as delivered through the mental sugar rush of an idle social media scroll. The digital whisper of the possibility of "lemon brownies" is a reflection of the scent experience of "bubblecrush daydream."

What a delight! Saccharine Zest! More artists should make perfumes!!