| ⭐✨ |
I need someone to tell me what the hype is about…Not because I’m desperate to like this or anything. I can very much go on about my life never hearing this again and be totally at peace. It’s not as a way to back anyone into a conversational corner, imprisoning them with a barrage of self-righteous pomp about “taste” and “artistic intent”. I don’t even necessarily need to know because I think that it will change my perspective if I were to approach it again. It’s just a case of morbid curiosity. There is a seemingly universal reverence right now for Slayyyter’s latest. An industrially-tinged electro-pop crank-fest that takes ‘loudness war’ production choices and feeds them through a woodchipper. Yet, it exists in a particularly strange no man’s land. It’s not catchy enough to be a solid Y2K/2010’s pop radio nostalgia tour, and it isn’t abrasive enough to rival the most hair cell singeing electro-industrial music of recent times, like Black Dresses for example. For as much fry that Slayyyter wishes to stack onto her vocals, it actually highlights just how little of any note is happening in the album’s finer pockets.
Hence my curiosity. If this album is so worthwhile that it can generate the sort of year-round buzz that this is likely to obtain, based on early reviews at least, then my question ultimately becomes: what are other people hearing? Even if we’re to take this release as being in the same peer group as current hyperpop-adjacent acts like Underscores, Jane Remover and Charli XCX, Slayyyter doesn’t convince me at all that these shoes can be adequately filled. I am aware that the comparison game turns people off, but I choose to see it more as necessary contextualisation. Art begets art, and nothing is wholly unique or original. Part of me senses from Slayyyter that they desire to be like the others who are kicking goals with these styles. The sort of subversive dance, pop and electronic fusions that have been garnering both community and large-scale acclaim for almost a decade now. The loosely memetic feel in these artists’ work that has signified a more spiritually-online ethos. Even by these metrics, Slayyyter sounds largely behind the times. Auraless, forceful in her humour, self-referential as a means of ticking off a box in a list.
Maybe I am missing something. There is still plenty of room for irreverent club mindlessness, and I am certainly not averse to it either. What I say is, if you want to capture that mode, you need to build a more solid foundation for yourself. The music here echoes both bygone eras and modernist pop trends, and thinks that’s enough on its own to succeed. At the end of the day, I couldn’t pick Slayyyter out of a line-up. Mostly due to the absurd amount of effects and compression on the production, but additionally, she lacks an actual identifier. She apes common formulas well, but it’s more like an outline of the proper thing. Rarely does she lay a hook that actually stirs anything in me. Rarely if ever do any of the beats pop with a melody or a progression worth remembering. It is almost entirely vapid style over entertaining substance, with some added obnoxiousness for good measure.
Dan Will Review 