on the pulse - 2021 - #14 - clairo, ksi, vince staples, tones and i, willow, tkay maidza

Yes, I know it’s a been a while since the last episode of On The Pulse and I know most of these are comfortably behind schedule - maybe that’ll mean I won’t get too much nonsense about some of my contentious takes, so let’s get On The Pulse!

Cole Chaney - Mercy - Well, this is way too long overdue. So I’ve been on the record that country has had a bit of an uneven year - and even that seems about to change with Emily Scott Robinson and Jason Eady dropping later this year - but I think the larger truth is that I’ve just needed to dig deeper to find stuff that truly blows my mind, so let me introduce Cole Chaney. An independent Kentucky singer-songwriter who plays a lot of raw, primarily acoustic material, with this debut he sparked some immediate comparisons to Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan. But I have to be blunt: Mercy puts Cole Chaney in a category of his own, mostly courtesy of his sound which is acoustic but embraces more Spanish guitar flourishes, surprisingly robust groove, and one of the best fiddle pickups I’ve heard since Dave Cobb, but also in his content. I would be inclined to say that Chaney hits every trope of Kentucky indie country - a messy relationship with the coal industry, reticence towards the mainstream music industry even if it might be his only way out, and a bones-deep connection to his roots - but there’s something more raw and damn near Biblical to his framing that helps elevate the scenes. I think what helps is just how grounded and emotionally honest this framing is, between the ravages of the coal industry, just how much he does not fit within a popular music paradigm, and how even if he or his partner have city dreams he’s likely going to wind up back on the mountains - it reminds me more of Ian Noe in how blazingly direct it can feel, in both the darkest moments and the light, with the most striking probably being the undercurrents of yearning on ‘Silver Run’ and ‘Fever Dream’ and the natural disaster of ‘The Flood’ to drive him back to earth. In short, this can be a harrowing, tough listen - the problem is that it’s in more ways than one, which I would put down to compositional choices. The album runs just under an hour and you do notice the length given how uniform his choice of guitar and fiddle are - and yeah, there’s a purity to this approach where accessibility to anyone unfamiliar is not the point at all, but when multiple individual songs cross the five minute mark, you wonder how this could been streamlined and refined a bit. Granted, when it’s so goddamn great at what it does, it can be hard to complain, but it’s not about to make it easy for you either; if there’s one essential truth expressed here, it’s how certain things might be inevitable, but none of this is easy. That said, on pure guitar and fiddle work alone I enjoyed this more than Zach Bryan and I did keep returning to it… so solid 8/10, this likely flew under your radar, and you should hear it.

Evidence - Unlearning Vol 1 - So this is a project that I specifically wanted to cover - I’ve been an Evidence fan for years, for his low-key brand of California boom-bap that nails a meditative balance between effective, lyrically bruising MC and more thoughtful poet taking stock of his life, the sort of rap you can place in the background easily but will give you plenty of easy rewards if you choose to pay attention. And yet for his first project away from his ‘weather trilogy’, I’m not as gripped as I would like to be. Now he’s still a very good rapper and producer - I love the distinctive cool of his old-school, sample-driven approach which feels extremely well-balanced and melodic to balance against the richer grooves, I like his measured vocal delivery and distinctly worldly approach to hip-hop, where you can tell he’s actively working to see a bigger picture, and he has all the spitters you’d expect to show up on a project like this… and yet it would be way too easy to say this is just another Evidence album without that added punch of content or insight that makes him special for me! Hell, the album is called Unlearning, which you would think would spur more introspection or experimentation outside the expected norm, and while you get traces of it in the slightly more stripped back production, the choice of Griselda affiliates as his guest stars on the mic, and some of the larger existential questions of how much one can really know themselves to discover who they really are, some of which was spurred on by Evidence’s looser, more freeform approach to writing on this album. The problem is that Evidence is still so locked into his sound and knowing who he is that the metatext of the album never really matches the questions in the text! But fine, that doesn’t have to happen - for as much as Evidence’s musings about keeping it real, his creative process, vague aspirational plans as he tours, and his clever nuggets of wit are familiar, it’s a good familiarity - but if there’s a point of experimentation it comes with steps away from hooks and the understated catchiness that used to be one of his secret weapons. It’s weird, this album is clearly trying to take a deconstructive approach, but it feels like a half measure where he sacrificed some of his strengths while the true depths of unlearning haven’t really happened yet. Still a good Evidence album, and I know some of his diehard fans adore this… but it didn’t click as deeply as I was hoping, so solid 7/10, I really wanted to dig this more, but if you like Evidence, you’ll still vibe with it.

Hiatus Kaiyote - Mood Valiant - this is one of those acts that I’ve been vaguely aware of for a while - you can’t be around the music festival scene and not hear Hiatus Kaiyote at some point - but also one for which I’ve got a bit of a distant relationship, a band that definitely can hit a textured, off-kilter but tropical vibe in their blur of jazz, funk, and R&B, but rarely one that has impressed me in presentation, especially when you start delving into their meandering, scattered compositions that always wind up a little less interesting than they should be. But hey, to the surprise of nobody they signed to Brainfeeder and six years after their breakout with Choose Your Weapon in 2015, what did we get? Well, we got the sort of project that reminded me why I’ve always been lukewarm on this group, leaning more into jittery, synth-inflected R&B with jazz funk basslines, weirdly grainy vocal pickups around Nai Palm’s squawky crooning, and some textured percussion that I wish the mixing knew how to center in any consistent way. In fact the production as a whole feels weird on this album - for the smooth vibes Hiatus Kaiyote want to cultivate, while I can appreciate the humid, tropical tones with some of the backing soul arrangements on ‘Get Sun’ or ‘Stone and Lavender’ which sound really pretty, you’d think they’d wouldn’t opt for compositional structures that can feel so jerky and awkwardly structured. Which is fine - I’ve always gotten more of a ramshackle jam band vibe to Hiatus Kaiyote, accentuated by the lyrics that feel perennially undercooked despite the naturalistic poetry - but it shows a lack of consistent focus on the elements that could elevate or impress like the unsurprisingly great grooves, where instead they’ll add awkward vocal squawks and pitch-shifting and off-key synths that don’t really match and just grate on the nerves - less psychedelic and more just a headache, especially ‘Sparkle Tape Break Up’. I will say that live nobody will really care about production and at least this is shorter than Choose Your Weapon, but this band has never been my thing and between the limited hooks and questionable mixing and utterly annoying closing track… yeah, they still aren’t. strong 5/10, not for me.

Hybrid - Black Halo - …well, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten one of these acts on my schedule. Yep, Hybrid is another long-running electronic act - this time in an offshoot of late 90s breakbeat called progressive breaks that became known for more lush, cinematic arrangements and even passages that owe more to vocal trance, which was a nice surprise as someone who used to listen to a lot of trance and where I recognized Hybrid from a few compilations - that had a respectable if not exactly genre-breaking 2000s run and did a lot soundtrack work, but in 2018 after the departure of founding member Chris Healings, they began pulling together new material, first for an album in 2018 that was surprisingly decent but felt weirdly dated, especially with all the dubstep touches, and now with this. And… ugh, this is going to sound really damn unfair, but here we go: given that Hybrid has done so much soundtrack work that’s become widely imitated across TV and films, listening to this new album really feels like I’m getting a portfolio of background selections with little that really jumps off the page. Professionally produced, sure - although whenever it tilts towards electronic rock or a return to dated dubstep elements it has the weirdly gummy feel of never being able to really explode - but that pristine professionalism has been so thoroughly co-opted that if you’re looking for any real experimentation, you’re going to be left grasping at straws, especially with the vocals interwoven that reminds me way too much of vocal trance from a decade plus ago! But hey, maybe I’m thinking about this wrong - Hybrid have never been that genre-pushing, maybe we should focus on refinement and strong compositions that can stand out… and on some level, with the greater integration of Charlotte Truman’s throatier vocals, you can see slightly more conventional song structures with even a few poppier moments balanced against the extended runtimes you’d expect in electronic music - this album goes over an hour and it definitely feels its length. But if you consider it on that level - and recognize the lyrics are utterly inessential and that they really can’t sell the few power ballads or “political” moments they try - you realize that on a poppier level this album just doesn’t impress me much; the percussion feels stiff and underserved in the low end and the melodic hooks in the piano and synths are not that impressive, and why does this remind me so much of the albums Lindsey Stirling put out in the mid-2010s? But at least Stirling would go for broke for gloriously silly moments and her violin added organic character - but outside of the violin they actually added to the gallop of ‘Seven Days’ that’s probably the best song here along with ‘Come Back To Me’ and ‘Nails’, this project is trying to be way more sleek and cool and mature and it slips towards generic and tedious as a result. At least it ends alright with ‘Sky Full of Diamonds’? Extremely light 6/10… and even then, it’s tough to recommend.

Tkay Maidza - Last Year Was Weird Vol 3 - I feel like when I talked about Rico Nasty for the first time proper last year - I’ve been aware of the hype behind Tkay Maidza for her varied but well-constructed flows, colourful personality with a lot of M.I.A. parallels, the ability to make those pop crossover cuts but also have them sound credible alongside some experimental trap bangers, she seemed to really hit her stride with her Last Year Was Weird series of EPs, especially Volume 2 in 2020 and I wanted to see how well that would translate as the series progressed. And with this… I’m a bit conflicted, to be honest, because while it’s absolutely a comedown with nothing close to her strongest bangers, at least some of that is intentional with the tilts towards more liquid, organic R&B production and a bit more singing from Tkay Maidza. Hell, given how the project starts I thought she’d be in this luxuriant, tropical territory for the majority of the project, all relaxed flexes to set the vibe that spanned touches of jazz funk or even early 2000s R&B… and then ‘Syrup’ drops back into the brittle, bass heavy knock that’s more familiar for most of the rest of the album. But if you’re expecting something as abrasive and hard-hitting as the JPEGMAFIA on her last collaboration… well, she has a tribute to Kim Possible on ‘Kim’ with Yung Baby Tate that has a smattering of metallic hyperpop tones and blown out distortion that also contort across ‘Cashmere’ and ‘Breathe’, and if it wasn’t for all the chipmunk fragments thrown across ‘High Beams’ I would have gotten behind that hook more. It’s odd, with the more introspective and meditative cuts I honestly found more to like with the pop and R&B moments, especially as for as good as her flows were, the insight felt oddly scattered and a bit underwritten. Happy the R&B moments bookended the project though, which I do think is pretty good… but I’m happy she’s getting more of a handle on where to transition her sound for her next full-length, it’s going to be interesting. So strong 6/10, but I think I’m going to like where she goes next a lot more.

Vince Staples - Vince Staples - I’ve been in a weird place with Vince Staples for a while now - I liked Hell Can Wait, but I didn’t love Summertime ‘06 or Big Fish Theory, and yet I think FM!, his slept-on project from 2018 was his most focused and effective work to date! This new album was reportedly just as short as FM!, but was more of a return to the downbeat introspection that opened up his career - courtesy of being produced entirely by Kenny Beats - so I was hoping this would wind up really grabbing me… and it wound up a bit of a tricky listen. Firstly, this is a project that runs around twenty minutes but also has two interludes and feels abbreviated as a result, and on some level you could almost consider it a transitional EP - Vince Staples is getting older, and while he’s always taken a frank eye to the gunplay and gangsta posturing in his neighbourhood, at this point he just sounds exhausted. I wouldn’t call it burnout so much as Vince sounds haunted and caught between the bloody nightmare of the streets and a world of fame and escape that doesn’t feel remotely real to him. He’s looking for friends who won’t just ask for money, lovers who don’t just want bags to fill their own voids within, where he’s not being judgmental so much as seeking a bit of escape, where he’d love to go to the beach but even that doesn’t really fill the void - the distrust and loneliness feels palpable, especially when he can’t even trust his fans, but he’s also not the kind to take something to dull the pain; in feeling all of it, it can hit harder. That said, as much as I really like Vince’s framing and content and delivery, the project feels over before it really begins and I found myself wishing he delivered a little more, especially as a lot of what I’m describing has been subtext or outright text on previous album, especially early on. But surprisingly, I think my larger point of frustration might be the production from Kenny Beats - maybe it just comes as a cooldown after the wild swing of Big Fish Theory and just how hard FM! went off, but this is more of what you’d expect from him at this point with chalky percussion, creaking melodies that still build to a pretty solid bounce, and the occasional pitch-shifted sample that just doesn’t quite work for me. So overall… again, it’s solid and it’s got enough hooks to keep me listening which is why I’m giving it a 7/10, but it feels transitional and a setup to Vince’s next big swerve, and that might be more interesting.

Tones & I - Welcome To The Madhouse - …look, y’all know why this is on my schedule, and it’s for two reasons. One, I might be one of the few people who actually still likes ‘Dance Monkey’ which I thought was a smarter and more potent song than many thought - granted, I can also tolerate her voice so that wasn’t too bothersome - and two, whenever an album gets a score from a colleague on the far extremes of the scale, folks line up to check to see whether it’s an outlier or other critics agree. And thus for this debut… really? This is the album that everyone is now calling the worst thing ever, are you serious here? It’s bizarre to me because listening to this, if anything it’s just way more boring, generic, and oddly undercooked in comparison with ‘Dance Monkey’, which means if you’re comparing to other pop acts in the past five years, it’s nowhere near as badly produced as Bebe Rexha, as screamingly annoying as AJR, as boringly incompetent as Julia Michaels, or as faintly icky as Melanie Martinez, where you can draw some comparisons in the more garish textures but this album feels nowhere near as conceptual. In fact, even Tones & I’s distinctive squawk is downplayed the majority of this project, where the closer parallel might be Alessia Cara’s huskier register but with more robust backing vocal arrangements, but as someone who didn’t mind the exaggerated delivery I honestly wish there might have been more. And that’s the odd thing: for an album that starts by setting ‘baby’s first spookhouse vibe’ with the opening track and continue into the warped vibe of ‘Won’t Sleep’ and ‘Child’s Play’, the rest of the compositions play way closer to the sort of straightforward percussion-heavy clunkers that filled pop in the latter half of the 2010s. But that means the problems with that sound surge to the forefront, between questionable synth and effect choices and the production that definitely shows a lack of subtlety in the messy percussion blending and how outside of the vocals front and center, the melodies are very thin - not a good sign given how often this album wants to build theatrical bombast. In other words, it’s an album that lives and dies on Tones And I as a presence, but also wants to make that presence more accessible when I’m not sure that was ever fully in the cards - which is awkward because her writing doesn’t really do more to accentuate any of it. The emotional core of this album is rooted in the loss of a friend who had once lived with her and her friends in the titular madhouse, as well as her depression and anxiety, but the lyrics feel painfully basic in exploring that grief and angst - you could be forgiven in thinking that most of this plays to stock self-esteem anthems or the occasional bratty party moment that’s nowhere near as edgy as it thinks it is. But again, that just makes it all forgettable to me - I’ve heard a dozen albums that play in this territory, and while the production issues tip it away from quality, it’s just not worth hating. Strong 4/10, if you hated ‘Dance Monkey’ you won’t like this, but as someone who still likes that song… just not much to say here.

WILLOW - Lately I Feel Everything - There’s a reason I’ve generally avoided talking about the artistic efforts of the Smith kids, and no, it’s not due to any comparison of their parents’ art. It’s more because the conversation is thorny in a way that’s tough to describe, because on the one hand growing up in that house and environment could not have been easy for anyone involved. On the other hand, I’ve observed similarities between Jaden and Willow Smith in that they often have enough raw talent, resources, and even taste to make good art… but the vision to execute and refine it is woefully underdeveloped, which is why on a textural level it might seem like there’s potential, but the content is unfocused at best and at worst, the sort of pretentious that is desperately clawing for transgressive meaning but utterly implodes with any deeper analysis. Now Willow’s profile is a lot less memetic than her brother’s, but I’ve listened to her catalog before now and it’s just as apparent and frustrating, which is why a hard swerve into more composed rock music - hi Travis Barker! - may give her foundation she’s been seeking? Well… look, I don’t want to call this trend-chasing, mostly because it’s not all filtered through the Travis Barker lens that would have more pop punk accessibility and there’s enough scrappy alternative edges with the downtuned guitars and messy scuzz to seem like it could click in this lane. But I know my punk, and I have to be blunt: the majority of these songs feel like undercooked first drafts and if this wasn’t made by Willow Smith with the backing of Roc Nation behind it, nobody would care about this album. The grooves are barely here, especially the basslines, the drums are over-emphasized and not just on the songs produced by Travis Barker - or on ‘GROW’ they just sound like shit, much like all the synths on this project - the guitars are really overcompressed and thin, and I really don’t like how Willow’s vocals are produced - a ton of echo and further back in the mix which to me screams distance from her target audience and not quite obscuring how she doesn’t have a real edge to her delivery. More grating is the production as a whole - too clean by half, but with mixing and mastering that shows less intentional rough edges and more amateurish sloppiness, which might work with some of the baffling indie pivots that sound okay, but don’t fit with anything else here. And then we have the guest stars: don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to hear Tierra Whack drop a verse out of nowhere and for Avril Lavigne to pop up for 2000s cred and for Cherry Glazerr of all people to deliver some great garage scuzz to the closing track, but their delivery and vocal production seems to be imported from different, better albums, and it’s actively distracting. Then there’s the content - I mentioned this when I covered ‘transparentsoul’ on Billboard BREAKDOWN, how it felt weirdly haughty and not really populist… well, that continues across the album with a lot of kiss off moments and relationship melodrama alongside her self care journey, all of which seems terminally underwritten as per usual. But then there’s odd moments like on ‘naive’ where she talks about running from cops and her friends getting shot with rubber bullets and how she doesn’t want to be naive in hoping for a better future, but by the time we get to ‘BREAKOUT’ she seems to regain her confidence… all the while quoting Kanye West. But it’s a comparison that makes sense, because I’m reminded a lot of how much Kanye was ripping off Death Grips for Yeezus and doing what he thought he was supposed to do - but he still managed some transgressive moments and great production, whereas this has neither. Folks, there’s so much better punk out there if you look beyond the name - 4/10, I recommend skipping this.

KSI - All Over The Place - …you know, when I went on Dead End Hip Hop in 2017 and talked about the rise of YouTube stars making what I termed fuckboi rap, it led to a messy conversation of folks coming in outside the culture for a quick buck and then bouncing - just look at the Paul brothers. Four years later, I’ve got mixed opinions on where I was coming from there - sure, trap became the dominant sound and everyone in every genre starting doing it, but fuckboi rap remains an obnoxious presence on the Hot 100 and it’s not like these acts are the dominant charting force for whatever ‘chart’ matters in this conversation. But if you flip across the ocean to the UK, you have KSI, who was very much involved in that diss track scene but KSI leveraged his rising fame to continue pursuing music with bigger connections than ever and moving into outright albums and surprisingly robust charting presence. And I’ll be honest, I considered talking about Dissimulation but there really wasn’t much to say about it - generic pop trap notable for being carried by guest collaborations and more forgettable than awful, with KSI often being the least interesting part of his own album. But apparently this new album was an improvement, and for some reason someone cared enough to request this… and wow, obvious joke about the project living up to its title is obvious. Let’s get the obvious problems out of the way: the mixing and mastering is wildly inconsistent from track to track as it whipsaws from genre to genre, KSI’s singing especially in his attempts at falsetto can be rough at best, and whenever he tries to brag about YouTube success it sounds painfully corny, especially alongside rappers like Bugzy Malone, 21 Savage and Lil Durk! That’s not saying he doesn’t have skills as a rapper - his flow is nothing that special but he’s competent and has plenty of personality to compensate, especially as he doesn’t always go to usual trap standbys in content - but when it usually defaults to flexing with the occasional bafflingly corny reference, it’s hard for me to take any of this seriously, especially when it’s rare that the production rises above midtier for whatever style of trap or drill he’s flowing over, especially with all the chipmunk fragments. So you’d think the pop cuts would be better given how many of them are on this project… but honestly, I’m not sure KSI adds enough as a vocal or lyrical presence to really elevate any of these, especially with a lack of personal detail. It’s weird, this is an album that’s trying to go in so many directions to show versatility, but outside of the YouTube stuff I’m left feeling like KSI is a bit of a blank slate on record, where you could swap him out and few would know the difference. So you’re left scrabbling for whatever cuts aren’t held back by the corny moments or are elevated by their guest stars… ‘Patience’ with YUNGBLUD and Polo G is fun, I liked ‘Really Love’ with Craig David until that awful second verse from KSI, Rico Love sounds great on ‘Flash It’, and I guess I’ll say ‘Holiday’ was a sweet chill moment. But outside of that this is a 5/10, take it or leave it.

Clairo - Sling - It’s been weird watching the waves of hype with Clairo. i remember the buzz when she first went viral in and around bedroom pop as a homegrown talent with remarkable poise and vulnerability, and for a decent bit of that to be punctured when it was exposed just how well-connected her family connections were to help her get in the door and blow up. Then with the release of Immunity in 2019 it became abundantly apparent that her predominantly Gen Z audience didn’t care and the album did get modest critical acclaim, so I checked it out… and wow, it did very little for me. Call it a case of Bandcamp overexposure where this sound is dime-a-dozen, or that Clairo’s delivery and writing were not that impressive and the production’s cleaner edges felt oddly blended - guess I can thank Rostam for that - but this felt very middle-of-the-road and popular because people don’t want to dig on Bandcamp, but I did hear her sophomore album was an improvement, with Jack Antonoff of all people stepping in to help on production. And what we got now feels less like bedroom pop and more adjacent to the barely jazzy, vaguely retro adult-alternative coffee house music that flooded the 2000s, undoubtedly a move that makes sense given modern trends but man, if Clairo wasn’t that interesting to me before, she sure as hell isn’t now. And this has helped me realize something about Jack Antonoff’s production in recent years: while he’ll assemble a classically-inspired and generally pretty backdrop - and with Clairo I do think it’s a positive they’ve brought in more multi-tracking to give her a little more presence in the more ornate mix, especially given how flagrantly this album is pulling from the goopier side of 60s pop singer-songwriters with all the hammond organ, touches of horns, really pretty strings, and watery guitars, or whatever the hell the tuning was on ‘Zinnias’ - if he doesn’t have much to work with he can’t spin underwhelming compositions or a weak vocal presence into gold. And I do think that’s true about Clairo - her style of writing is meandering, with meter shifts and key changes often sliding through in a way that should be way more interesting than it is, but her vocal delivery is so prim and twee and polished that I don’t pick up any of the intensity she wants to imply with the writing…. and frankly, in a year with Lucy Dacus and Charli Adams and Emily Scott Robinson right around the corner, I don’t remotely get it from the writing either! Now to be fair, I think expecting that level of rawness is off the table - Clairo is targeting a very old-fashioned feminine perspective and approach that’s trying to be more flowery and subtle and intimate, maybe even submissive and domestic - this is an album that’s targeting bigger implications growing up and the weight of certain expectations, but playing in smaller emotions, and I get that appeal to its target audience who will never seriously challenge any of those societal expectations. And there are moments in which I can feel the emotional drama, at least in the writing: ‘Blouse’ is potent highlighting how she’s trying to get a guy to pay attention but all he’s doing is staring down her shirt, and given she’s not strong enough to confront him, she just tries to keep working to get what she wants. Then there’s ‘Amoeba’ where she second-guesses her moments of running wild instead of connecting with her family, and ‘Reaper’ where she seriously contemplates what domestic life might mean for her longer-term - worth mentioning here is that Clairo is 22 - especially alongside the depression she acknowledges on ‘Little Changes’ and ‘Just For Today’. But the execution of this feels really ‘off’ to me, with no interest in actually selling the implied heavier stakes of these moments, especially in tone, because she already seems to know she’s going to fall in line, which flies in the opposite direction of great country or folk or singer-songwriters who take those little moments and amplify the emotional drama, often against those systems. It makes you realize that on the album opener ‘Bambi’ she might be referring more to herself in conversations with the industry than anyone else - compare with how Billie Eilish writes about the music industry on Happier Than Ever and you might get my trepidation here. And while ‘privilege’ is the word that leaps to mind - although knowing Clairo is out as bi shifts this dynamic in weird ways beyond the brief mentions on ‘Partridge’ and I wish she had delved deeper into those implications, especially with as much as she touches the domestic vibe - what I’m reminded of most is when a few women I follow in indie country began examining the fashion and aesthetic of cottagecore and how it can feel very conservative in disquieting ways, especially marketed at a younger generation - I mean, if you don’t want Gen Z pushing back on bad systems, have it marketed from their mouths, right? And I can’t blame Clairo for this - the struggle of knowing where you fit within gender and societal expectations is real as you grow up, and she’s free to do whatever she wants here - but you also can’t blame me if the industry plant narrative slips back into the picture with this being her thematic destination and presentation. Now some of you might say, ‘well, you give it a pass in country’ - first off, I rarely do, but even if so, country is plainly open with conservative themes - Clairo is making baroque pop singer-songwriter material marketed at Gen Z, and doesn’t show much of the thematic self-awareness to flesh out the dramatic framing, especially in the presentation. So you don’t need to tell me this isn’t for me - it’s blindingly obvious I’m not the target audience, and even then I acknowledge she’s improved as a songwriter. But beyond my thematic issues, this is a very tepid, thoroughly underwhelming project that doesn’t earn any of the historical comparisons it wants to make - pretty, but inert, and very telling of Clairo’s future. 5/10 - I get this album’s appeal and target, and I’m not either of them.