“Once you’ve tried you can’t go higher,” Liam Benzvi and SSION sing on their new single about the ups and downs of falling into, and revisiting, love.

They refer to this state as “PTLSD,” a combination of PTSD and LSD that explores the psychedelic highs and traumatic memories associated with relationships. “Sinking into the same old ways/ That we did a few years ago,” they sing, remembering how they “were lost in fog machines and dancing to techno.” Ultimately, though, “it doesn’t matter after all.”

This is the third release off Benzvi’s forthcoming album, …And His Splash Band, out September 27 off Fat Possum, following last month’s Blood Orange-assisted single “Other Guys” and “Dust.” The entire project promises to explore the “push and pull” of Benzvi’s romantic encounters, bringing in other friends and collaborators like Ren G (of Club Eat fame) and Porches to highlight these personal experiences.

“PTLSD” has been in the works for around six years between Benzvi and SSION (real name Cody Critcheloe), originally completed back in 2021. “We demoed it first in my apartment in New York, then again in his apartment in LA,” Benzvi says. “Two years went by, and I wanted it for my record. It’s a special concoction of tenderness, sadness and humor.”

Critcheloe explains that they wrote the track in a few short hours. “It was intuitive, impulsive and sweet,” he says. “It was originally supposed to be a SSION song from a forthcoming album, but I got sidetracked by the allure of video directing and decided (like always) I wasn’t interested in pursuing the business of music.”

In true SSION directorial fashion, the “PTLSD” video is quietly outrageous and dramatizes the everyday through a queer, tongue-in-cheek lens. It rolls out like a moving comic strip, between Benzvi and Critcheloe in a suburban neighborhood. They chop wood, examining the “hard and heavy” qualities of an axe, then become your average-looking couple in matching button-downs and khaki slacks. A neighbor sprays them with his hose (hate crime or sexy photoshoot?) before another man enters the storyline, throwing everything out of whack.

“Cody is someone I would work with again because he is wildly creative, unpretentious and endlessly generous. The best kind of collaborator,” Benzvi gushes. “We wanted the song to be really good and I think that shows. And the visual aspect of it, which came together very quickly and not long ago, made it even more meaningful.”

When Critcheloe revisited “PTLSD,” he was surprised he still loved it after all these years. “Cut to today: I’m happy we got to build a world around it and that it’s finally free,” he says. “Liam is wise and kind and he has a big, beautiful voice. He’s a great songwriter and I’m glad we got a chance to fuck (no homo).”

Liam Benzvi will be celebrating his …And His Splash Band album release at Brooklyn’s TV Eye on October 2. For tickets, click here.

Photos courtesy of SSION

“I developed a huge crush on this very elusive woman,” STRONZA tells PAPER of her latest single, “Burning Up.” “It was magnetic, on and off, exciting, torturous. In the end I just put it all in this song and walked away. But I love having a crush. They always creatively inspire me.”

The South African artist channeled that infatuation into a synth-pop ode to “wanting what we can’t have.” In it she sings, “burning up for you,” at the chorus, her voice lifting lighting on top of glittery keys as kinetic percussion kicks in.

The video, premiering today on PAPER, was directed by South African filmmaker Royd Ringdahl, known for his music videos for Internet Girl.

“I wanted to make a ‘lesbian Brokeback Mountain lite,’” STRONZA says of the video’s inspiration. “Playing on this idea of unrequited love. I sat down with Royd, the director, and we brainstormed against the song’s meaning. He came back with this great treatment that explores a friendly camping trip gone awry amidst romantic tensions and miscommunications. Plus there’s a fencing sequence which has long been a fantasy of mine to do.”

Parts of the video, particularly the cast, came together spontaneously. “I met these three goddesses when I was home on a trip in Cape Town, they were all like six feet tall with very long hair and constantly frolicking in nature,” she tells us. “At first I was like, ‘Is this a cult, and how do I join?’” STRONZA says. “Then we became very close friends and I realized I they were the cast I needed for my lesbian Brokeback Mountain idea.” After she tapped Ringdahl to direct, they got a “small but mighty crew” together on a farm in Paarl and began to shoot.

“It was supposed to be a bright, sunny day but on the morning of the shoot a crazy, cold fog descended,” she says. “We could barely see anything and half the crew got lost, so we went to work and just started shooting. Eventually, the fog lifted and created this eery vibe which I now really love.”

The track and video are a first glimpse at STRONZA’s upcoming EP. “I’m working on more of a dance/club track next,” she says. “I really want to create synthy dance music that integrates Amapiano-inspired beats. Who wants in?”

So, how do Royd and STRONZA want viewers to feel when they see the visuals? “I want the audience to feel present in the music, to come to their own conclusions both emotionally and narratively,” Ringdahl tells PAPER. “I think that is the beauty of art, no matter how intentional or personal it feels making it, once it’s out there, it’s no longer yours.”

STRONZA adds, “I want them to feel a little turned on.”

Photography: Royd Ringdahl

Uptown. Downtown. In the popular imagination they’re not just different zip codes, they’re separate planets, with their own orbits, languages, even magazines. For 178 years T&C has epitomized uptown, and for the past 40 of those, PAPER has embodied downtown. Always they have rotated around the same axis: New York City.

So we convened a dream dinner party, inviting PAPER people and card-carrying members of Club T&C, a first-of-its-kind collab between two media institutions that have more in common than meets the eye. We have PAPER OGs turned T&C contributors and T&C fixtures cosplaying PAPER. Are they PAPER curious but T&C-forward? Maybe more like PAPER-istas by day and Town & Country-ites by night.

Probably both. It’s all in a change of wardrobe, a secret wink and hand- shake, and the international language of “invincible glamour,” as Guy Trebay puts it in his new memoir, Do Something, which chronicles an earlier version of the city in which the only currency that mattered was being yourself “in a world that, as someone once said, day and night does its best to make you into every- body else.” Perhaps that city is not so bygone. Perhaps it’s right here, right now.

In 1966 a debutante mingled on T&C’s cover with the Rolling Stones. Today we introduced Park Avenue to Papi Juice, the ’90s Club Kid Jennytalia, and the DJ Mazurbate.

From left: DJ and Papi Juice co-founder Oscar Nñ; Nicky Hilton; DJ and Papi Juice co-founder Adam Rhodes; Susan Gutfreund; Jenny Dembrow, executive director, the Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York; illustrator and Papi Juice art director Mohammed Fayaz; and DJ and stylist Matthew Mazur. Papi Juice Vol. 93 is Aug. 23.

PAPER too knows how to mix it up. In its 20th anniversary issue, future T&C cover stars Chloë Sevigny and John Waters vamped for the camera.

Here, from left: Nightlife fixture Markus Kelle; gallerist Cristina Grajales, whose “Woven Together” exhibit opens Oct. 29; social media creator Clara Perlmutter (aka @TinyJewishGirl); Guy Trebay; performer Aquaria; T&C and PAPER contributing writer Lynn Yaeger; stylist Beverly Nguyen, founder of Beverly’s New York City; T&C and PAPERcontributing writer Michael Musto; model and illustrator Connie Fleming; T&C and PAPER contributing artist Ruben Toledo, who collaborated with SCAD on “Isabel Toledo, A Love Letter,” open now through Dec. 16; gallerist Angela Westwater, whose Peter Schlesinger exhibit opens Sept. 6; and artist Justin Vivian Bond, who is performing at Joe’s Pub from Sept. 10-14.

The modern master of group portraiture was Richard Avedon, whose photomurals informed our own.

Here, from left: Sarah Hoover, whose book, The Motherload, is out in January; photographer Quil Lemons, whose work is on view at Jenkins Johnson Gallery through Aug. 23; author Candace Bushnell; designer Narciso Rodriguez; performer Jack Powers; artist Anna Weyant; stylist Ian Bradley; T&C contributing editor Alejandra Cicognani; curator Brooke Wise; T&C contributor and author Carole Radziwill; (seated) Dustin Pittman, whose new book of photographs, New York After Dark, is out Sept. 3; and photographer Emilio Madrid.

Pizza’s here! Anybody care for a slice? It is a dinner party, after all.

From left: Social media creator Jeauni Cassanova; Lizzie Tisch, chief curator LTD X NYC; nightlife impresario Susanne Bartsch, whose coffee table book Bartschland is out now; chef DeVonn Francis, founding director at Yardyworld; writer and #NEVERWORNS creator Liana Satenstein (on floor); photographer Mason Rudnick; PAPER director of special projects Mickey Boardman; and performer Beaujangless.

A Letter From the Editor of Town & Country

When I was in college in Poughkeepsie, desperate for any drop of Manhattan I could find, I would go to the bookstore and buy three magazines: W (back when it was a broadsheet),T&C and PAPER. In those pages I found my New York. Three decades later, in my office at Hearst Tower, I got an email from our friend Mickey Boardman, PAPER‘s director of special projects. “Stellene,” he wrote, “our editor-in-chief Justin Moran has an idea for a collaboration.”

“This,” I said to Erik Maza, T&C’s executive style director, “could be interesting.” And after months of Zooms, and then quiet, and then feverish casting sessions, and a stroke of genius by photographer Hunter Abrams, and the village formed by our incredible teams, we have here the dinner party of our New York dreams.

“The idea from the get-go was a dinner party,” says Maza, the editor and writer of the story, “something that’s in our iconography. Recall the Rolling Stones and the debutante on the June 1966 cover? And PAPER‘s 20th-anniversary cover, shot at Indochine, which starred two future T&C cover stars? We both like to mix the bourgeois and the rebel. This shoot captures New York now: downtown, uptown, old school, new school, analog, digital, the past and the future.

When Susan Gutfreund walked in, no one was more excited to meet her than Matthew Mazur (AKA Mazurbate). Feeding her dog, Lucky, cheese cubes during a fashion shoot is a vibe all generations can get behind.” That’s our kind of town. And country. Happy fall, my favorite season in the city.

—Stellene Volandes, Town & Country Editor-in-chief

Photography: Hunter Abrams
Styling: Town & Country Fashion Department
Hair: Walton Nunez at See Management
Makeup: J. Patrick at See Management
Set design: Anthony Asaro
Prop styling: Lauren Alexander
Production: Viewfinders
Location: Pier 59 Studios

Town & Country Editor-in-chief: Stellene Volandes
Town & Country Executive style director: Erik Maza
PAPER Editor-in-chief: Justin Moran
PAPER Special projects director: Mickey Boardman
Town & Country Visual director: Darrick Harris