Coming off the release of her most recent album, “Fatal Optimist,” last month, singer Madi Diaz has put out another project — but it’s far from new and serves a higher purpose.
The 39-year-old Grammy nominee announced on Monday, in a surprising turn, that she recorded a full track-by-track cover of Blink-182’s seminal 1999 album “Enema of the State.” All proceeds of her take on the breakout pop-punk LP — titled “Enema of the Garden State” — will go to the Defending Our Neighbors Fund, which helps immigrants have fair access to legal assistance.
“These recordings started out as a fun exercise fueled by the love and fandom I have for Blink-182 and the record ‘Enema Of The State,’” Diaz wrote in an Instagram post.
She went on to explain that the cover album was recorded in a New Jersey studio — hence the “Garden State” insertion on the album title — as she was recording “Fatal Optimist.”
“I wanted to see if I could run these songs and let the nostalgia drive my memory for the lyrics and tear through a punky acoustic arrangement. No planning, no overthinking, no analyzing allowed, just ripping into the songs,” she wrote. “It was pure joy with no clear intention of releasing this project until recently.”
“Enema of the State” is a far cry from the singer-songwriter’s usual fare. The Times’ pop music critic Mikael Wood described Diaz’s latest album as a “stripped-down set of songs about heartbreak and renewal arranged for little more than Diaz’s confiding voice and her folky acoustic guitar.”
Meanwhile, Blink-182 singer and bassist Mark Hoppus described “Enema of the State” in a decidedly different way in a 1999 interview with The Times.
“This record is about pretty much the same things we said on the last one,” said Hoppus. “Which was [that] girls hurt your feelings and free-form masturbation.”
Despite the stark differences in musicality, Diaz and her producer reminisced on “how incredible” the title “Enema of the State” was for a record and began to reflect on how strangely fitting the name seemed to fit the current political climate in the U.S.
“There is so much going on at this moment across America and so much pain with ICE raids and false condemnations of hard working American citizens and undocumented immigrants,” Diaz wrote. “[M]aybe we could use this version of enema of the (garden) state to raise awareness and money for people in need of defense and aid in their right to live and work and breathe and be and stay on American soil.”
The child of Peruvian and Danish immigrants, Diaz discussed how people from across the globe come together to make the U.S. what it is and how they shouldn’t be demonized for being born somewhere else.
She also further talked of the Defending Our Neighbors Fund organization and how she’s feeling about the government’s recent action against immigrants.
“So this project is up on bandcamp, and every penny it generates will go to @defendingourneighborsfund. This will help give immigrant families, adults, children in need of advocates, access to resources through this support system,” Diaz wrote. “They are providing immediate grants for trusted organizations to deploy legal advice and bond assistance. For me, it’s about much more than a nostalgia for teenage rebellion against mom and dad. F— ICE. Enema Of The State Forever.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
