Next up, a RuPaul’s Drag Race winner, Allie X once again, and just a bit of an extended kink conceit…

[Video]
[7.11]

Andrew Karpan: “Mistress Violet” is a searing, gothy sex anthem that appeared suddenly in the middle of the summer. Its vampiric craving for the indoors gave it a durability that lasted as the days grew shorter and the omnipresent anxiety of the ongoing pandemic pressed forward, relentlessly. The message is also relentless. First comes Violet’s flat affect, terse about her obsessions, unconcerned as they overwhelm her, like something from an Anna Biller movie. Aspiring subculture pop star Allie X moves her voice around to accommodate, as if trying it all on: the throbbing Depeche Mode beats, the theatrical explosion at the end. It’s fitting that all of this is outfitted in the language of fashion: Dior tights, six-inch Louboutins, etc. Like all good records, the precision is for us; it’s the silhouette that does the work.
[9]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A perfect drag routine for the same reasons it’s merely a good song: high drama and story conveyed with grand flourishes covering up threadbare structure.
[7]

Claire Biddles: “Yes, you’re correct in presuming that I prefer provocative extremes” is such a good staccato dominatrix line that I can’t believe it hasn’t already been used in a song like this. I don’t know much about Drag Race or drag-queen music, but this seems to deliver the plastic pastiche-y glamour that I would expect, and something a little more polished. Allie X is still underrated!
[7]

Iain Mew: My only direct experience of Drag Race has been the UK version. This is barely more developed than the songs in that, and a lot less fun.
[4]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Drag is a beautiful art form, but I’ve heard enough unfortunate collaborations to not expect too much. As a statement for Violet Chachki, “Mistress Violet” is true to the uptight, expensive, fashionable brand. But elsewhere, this only averts disaster, and you can’t shake the nagging feeling that Allie X could sound 10 times better with any number of other C-List celebrities. 
[5]

Ian Mathers: Look, when the track sounds like this (Fischerspooner go to a sex dungeon — no, a different sex dungeon than their regular one), as long as you sound sufficiently severe over it I’m pretty sold. And the combination of self-invention/self-expression/”shut your fucking mouth, pay pig” vibes meshes so well with the track that I’m fully sold.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: I have a Depeche Mode throw pillow and run an Enigma comments Twitter account. Did you think I wasn’t going to like this? (But I hope you also thought that I’d find it objectively stupid. Violet/violent, really?)
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: I need a 8 track rap album from these two, stat. They’ll need harder drums tho.
[8]

Austin Nguyen: Consonants crisp as new dollar bills and synths slinky as latex, “Mistress Violet” struts like Elektra Abundance-Evangelista at her most fatal, spectral and restrained until the final climax.
[7]