There is a word that has long been wielded against women with strong opinions, deployed to dismiss and diminish them in a way it rarely is against men. To call a woman strident is to suggest that her conviction is somehow inappropriate, that her firmness is a fault, that a woman saying sensible things in a measured tone has somehow overstepped. The double standard embedded in this word is exactly what GLEET confront, and Strident, released June 19, 2026, takes this loaded term and turns it into a defiant reclamation, contrasting the so-called stridency of women expressing reasonable views against the genuine patriarchal nonsense that often goes unchallenged. The track is a pointed political statement wrapped in GLEET‘s experimental approach, a song born from the explosion of online misogyny and the determination to answer it.
The central concept of Strident is a sharp piece of social observation. GLEET reflect on how the word strident is bandied about when referring to women with strong opinions but rarely applied to men, the double standard revealing the way that language itself can be used to police and dismiss women’s voices. This is a genuinely incisive observation, the recognition that the same conviction is praised as strength in men and condemned as stridency in women, the word being a tool for delegitimizing women’s opinions. By naming this double standard, Strident exposes the mechanism by which women’s voices are diminished, the song confronting the loaded word and the inequality it embodies.
The track’s response to this double standard is genuinely defiant. GLEET contrast the so-called stridency of women, who are often simply saying sensible things in a measured tone, against the patriarchal nonsense coming from men, particularly in the context of what the band describes as the explosion of the online manosphere and men making a living from misogynistic content. The song’s defiant climax, the declaration that amounts to showing exactly what stridency can be, embodies the reclamation at its heart, the women provoked into genuine stridency by the dismissiveness and the nonsense they face. This movement, from the measured reasonableness that gets dismissed as strident to the genuine fierceness that the dismissiveness provokes, is the song’s powerful arc, the reclamation of the word as a badge rather than an insult.
The political context that GLEET respond to gives the song its urgency. The band points to the explosion of online misogyny, men making a living by saying ridiculous and offensive things, and even the infuriating phenomenon of men in 2026 questioning whether women should have been able to vote at all. This contemporary context makes Strident a timely response, the song confronting the genuine resurgence of misogynistic rhetoric in online spaces, the reclamation of the loaded word being a direct answer to the patriarchal nonsense the band sees proliferating. The song channels the frustration and the anger that this resurgence provokes, the genuine stridency of the response being entirely justified by the nonsense that prompts it.
The unusual creative process behind Strident reflects GLEET’s experimental approach. The track is built around voice messages, with friends coerced into sending voice clips after having the underlying concept explained to them. The instruments and some vocals were recorded in the band’s home studio, while the rest came as voice messages sent from people in London and Bangkok and the United States. This use of voice messages as the basis for the song is a genuinely innovative technique, the disparate voices from around the world woven into the track, the collaborative, geographically dispersed creation reflecting the band’s experimental sensibility. This method gives the song a distinctive texture, the various voices contributing to the song’s exploration of its theme, the chorus of voices embodying the collective nature of the response to misogyny.
The experimental tradition that GLEET work within illuminates their approach. While the band notes they had no specific influences in mind when making the song, they acknowledge a kinship with experimental works like Eno and Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and the work of Negativland and Nocturnal Emissions, artists known for their innovative use of found and manipulated audio. Though the voices in Strident are not found audio, the experimental spirit connects GLEET to this tradition of adventurous, concept-driven music, the band working in a lineage of artists who push the boundaries of how songs can be constructed. This experimental approach distinguishes GLEET’s work, the political message delivered through genuinely innovative means.
The song’s place in GLEET’s broader output reflects its spontaneous origin. Strident emerged during the process of finishing the band’s next album, Thames Sea, a conceptual work about London drowning beneath rising sea levels over the coming centuries. The track did not fit that album’s specific framework, instead popping out during the process, the title arriving from the drum track onward before the concept developed. This spontaneous origin gives Strident a sense of immediacy, the song being a direct response to the band’s reflections on the misogyny double standard rather than a carefully planned album track, the spontaneity reflecting the genuine frustration that prompted it.
The song’s relative restraint distinguishes it within GLEET’s catalog. Described as less of a wall of sound than most GLEET tracks, Strident represents a somewhat different sonic approach for the band, the relative restraint perhaps allowing the political message and the voices to come through more clearly. As usual for the band, there is a political message at the heart of the track, GLEET being a project that consistently engages with political and social concerns, Strident continuing this commitment with its confrontation of misogyny and the double standards embedded in language.
Strident is the sound of a loaded word reclaimed, an experimental political track that confronts the double standard by which women’s conviction is dismissed while men’s nonsense goes unchallenged. GLEET have taken the word used to diminish women and turned it into a defiant declaration, the voice messages from around the world woven into a pointed response to the resurgence of online misogyny.
You want strident? The song answers the dismissiveness with genuine fire, reclaiming the word as a badge of justified conviction. GLEET have made an experimental, politically charged track that confronts patriarchal nonsense with defiance, and its reclamation of a loaded word resonates as both social commentary and creative provocation.
This article reflects the political perspective that GLEET have chosen to express through their music, and listeners will of course bring their own views to the questions the band raises.
