Deep moments of catharsis often produce transformative work, and this is certainly the case with the debut EP of 24-year old Toronto native, Aunty Social aka Daniela Gitto. Titled, The Day My Brain Broke, the EP documents a period of isolation and evolution for Daniela, as she worked her way out of a toxic lifestyle — computer, mic, and MIDI in hand. Using these tools for recovery, the EP is both an amalgamation of references (from poetry to childhood memories) and a personal statement on the inner workings of the mind. In combination, the five songs that make up The Day My Brain Broke, cover a wide range on the emotional and sonic spectrum. On the latter, it’s hard to pinpoint a genre Aunty Social’s work falls into. Descriptors like electronica, experimental, and art pop don’t really do the EP justice, but they are starting points for understanding just how far Aunty Social can stretch. In essence, the EP captures the process of transformation and its many attributes, both the dark and the light. As Daniela says, “this is a personal catharsis where I’m trying to let go of that part of me, that lifestyle, that person I used to be.”
Growing up, Daniela always had a love for music, but her Aunty Social moniker reveals her inability to face the crowd. “I grew up with a bit of a deformed jaw, and there’s a huge gap in my teeth,” she says. “So I always kept the singing to myself just so people couldn’t see my insecurities…from the beginning of my music career up until I was fifteen or sixteen, every video of me is of my back turned to the camera.” Things changed after Daniela played an open mic competition, and a judge commented on her talents, urging her to “break out of the box.” That moment acted as a catalyst along with reconstructive jaw surgery. “That’s when it was like, there’s absolutely nothing holding me back. I can’t even claim insecurity because my insecurity isn’t there anymore, so I just had to get rid of old tendencies.” Afterwards, she joined a band, started playing shows in Toronto (this time facing the audience), and met a producer that she would later collaborate with for The Day My Brain Broke.
The EP itself is an exercise in unpacking pain, and unfolds in a series of vignettes that make up a larger story. “Each song represents something that affected me during my upbringing and during this journey into a toxic lifestyle,” says Daniela. “There are a lot of underlying mental health things that intertwine everything together.” The EP’s first track “Trying,” recounts Daniela’s religious past, and the crisis that followed when she left it all behind. “Before all of this, religion was my identity. It’s what I relied on, it’s what I followed. I was raised in a Catholic family, I went to a Catholic school. Once that was gone, I really didn’t know who I was. I felt like all this progress that I had made from six to sixteen was completely void, and then I had to muster up all the things that make me who I am.”
“Crack a Deal” comes next, and with its irreverent darkness, it enters the same territory that such seminal female artists of the 90s explored. With an understated trip-hop backdrop, the vocals are on full display. There’s a ferocity that almost makes its way to outright scornfulness, which works when the song is about rejection. Not the romantic kind, but of the prohibitive nine to five life that offers little fulfillment. Daniela explains, “I had to face my own mortality and look at myself and say, you can either do your last year of college in something you’re not completely interested in or you can spend a year trying to pursue something you’ve loved your whole life.” Choosing the second option paid off, not that it didn’t come without its struggles. “I have underlying insecurity issues, self-esteem issues and an issue with assertiveness. I decided to face my music like a career, not like I got lucky.”
“Traveling Circus” is a direct line to Daniela’s stream of consciousness, and tumbles out in similar form. In patched together phrases, Daniela reveals those aforementioned self-esteem issues, as a main refrain states, “maybe I’m insecure / I’ve known that since I was just a little girl.” There is an affecting honesty to it all, which she attributes to her love of poetry and writing. She cites writers like Hubert Selby Jr. and Vonnegut because not only is there honesty in all of their work, “but there is no shame in that honesty…honesty in growth and disgusting things. Things that you do when nobody’s home.” The admittance is as impressive as its construction, as the song pulses beautifully between a minimalist verse and a forceful chorus.
The pulsing continues on “Thinking About Thinking about Thinking,” but edges more towards the lilt of a love song. While it sounds like a conversation between two people, Daniela says, “The reality is, it’s just me having an internal conversation. A lot of our thoughts are just back and forth where it’s just you talking to yourself half the time, making decisions based on your emotional whims — looking at yourself like a significant other in way, who you’re constantly trying to calm down and moderate.” At one point in the song, the depressive internal loop is symbolized by a fear of the dark and a plea to a lover. With poetic ability, Daniela uses metaphor to externalize the things that simmer below the surface.
While most of the EP deals with more somber themes, it ends on a lighter note, at least musically. “Cortex” draws upon Daniela’s childhood love of video game Crash Bandicoot. Using the characters as stand-ins for people in her life, she employs this method on “Cortex,” to discuss a big event in her life. “Instead of using depressive language, I stylized it as something from my childhood, something that could be taken as innocent.” 8-bit era riffs are subtly sprinkled throughout to give the song a vintage arcade vibe and it’s one of the few tracks on the EP that slowly builds into a full crescendo, a fitting end for a record that grapples with trauma and its rippling wave of consequences.
It’s rare that a debut EP is so complete and fully formed, but Aunty Social has achieved such a thing. The Day My Brain Broke is a powerful mixture of rhetorical prowess and raw truth. While Daniela makes clear that this is first and foremost a personal statement, and not an awareness campaign, she notes that she wishes that people her age (she is 24 for reference) would seek help. “A lot of people say to me, I’ve already adapted to the world, I’ve already become who I am. What’s the point of getting checked out just to confirm it? And what people don’t understand is how valuable the education is and just the feeling that you’re not inadequate because that’s how I felt my whole life.” If transformation is the overall theme, then the conversion of inadequacy to self affirmation is on full display on this incredible collection of songs. The Day My Brain Broke is coming out in 2020 on Nettwerk Records.