Wednesday, November 7, 2018

album review: 'am i a girl?' by poppy

So here's something that concerned me surrounding Poppy for some time now, and really more than ever going into her output in 2018: how long would the satire hold?

Because let's face it, for as much as I enjoyed Poppy.Computer, there was the unanswered question surrounding what that next step could even be for her musically if she wanted to continue down this route. What worked about that album was how, on some level, it was both a dissection of the pop idol and the system that props her up, but a celebration of the craft all the same, and there was enough poise to split the difference between dark, subversive nightmare fuel and the plastic sheen of bubblegum pop. Overall, I found the album pretty excellent, even if it was taking one too many sidelong glances at a sound where Grimes had laid the groundwork - ironic, given that she's now on this new Poppy album.

But to be blunt, 2018 hasn't been great for Poppy. I'm putting aside the Titanic Sinclair/Mars Argo drama - mostly because in mid-September a judge dismissed the case and there were a lot of ugly, convoluted layers that aren't relevant to the music - but it's hard to deny the plotline of the videos has felt undercooked compared to the build-up to Poppy.Computer, and considering the YouTube Premium series never took off, I wasn't sure what more satirical territory they could target. What also raised alarm bells was the expanded team behind the project: yes, Poppy and Titanic Sinclair still had writing credits on everything, but the team was much bigger and it was hard not to see Diplo's increased involvement as a label head looking to deliver a more commercially-viable product, and I didn't want to see good pop satire diluted by the pop machine. But hey, Am I A Girl? could still work, right?

Well, yes and no. Let me get this out of the way quickly, before I get into a more complicated thematic dissection of this album - come on, it's pop satire, this sort of deconstruction is my comfort zone as a critic - I don't think this is as good as Poppy.Computer. It's certainly stepping a little further out of its comfort zone but in terms of pure pop appeal, there's a sour, oddly defensive twinge to Am I A Girl? that sadly doesn't translate as well in that lane. Don't get wrong, I think the intersection of indie pop rock that Poppy inhabits has potential, but the pivot this album takes, while having potential, feels undercooked and lacking some of the distinctive personality and internet-driven originality of Poppy.Computer.

Actually, let's focus in on the 'computer' portion of this for a second, because so much of Poppy's original appeal was grounded in a surprisingly intuitive deconstruction of internet fame and culture, and Poppy.Computer managed to hit the balance between living the memes and crossing over to a slightly broader fanbase. Am I A Girl? takes the expected approach of confining the internet culture iconography and memeable weirdness to subtext at most, and I can't help but feel that was a major misstep right out of the gate. Sure, fans might know that the interludes obviously represent a new iteration of Poppy getting reincarnated with a slightly different personality, and I know that this far in, it makes sense for Poppy to take on more conventionally human characteristics... but this is where intent collides with execution, and that Poppy as a pop singer is limited. Not a bad singer - it takes a lot of work to convincingly play a near-human robotic presence - but when you get the exaggerated snootiness of 'Aristocrat' or how much she slips off-key on 'The Rapture Ball', it makes you question whether she'd have been better sticking within groove-heavy internet weirdness, where it could be explained through the uncanny valley of the internet rather than human vocal slip-ups that tarnish the illusion.

And this is where we might as well start talking about theme and metaphor, because in comparison with the more unique arc of Poppy.Computer, Am I A Girl? actually feels pretty conventional, with a steady ascent through decadence coinciding with increased degeneracy, leading to an apocalyptic and gory ending placed with maximum ironic juxtaposition on 'X' between bubbly 60s pop and a howling blast of death metal. Now on the one hand, I can't deny the arc and framing makes sense for the times and if we're going for a late-capitalism reading of all of this - down to the incredibly on-the-nose Marie Antoinette references on 'Aristocrat' - it's checking the conventional boxes in retelling this story... but there are problems with this, and the first is that even in mainstream pop this is territory that's been trod before - hell, Katy Perry was framing herself as Marie Antoinette on the video of 'Hey Hey Hey' earlier this year, and while that song is still terrible, it fit Katy Perry's self-destructive tendencies better than Poppy playing the synthesized cipher. But what might annoy me even more is the framing of this - as I said, going back to Poppy.Computer that album's genius was digging into the madness of the deconstruction but still walking away celebrating and valuing pop music at the end, but Am I A Girl? either waters down that celebration or ditches it altogether. And this is coming from someone who really loves both 'Play Destroy' with Grimes and 'X' - they're great songs, but thematically they're playing in juxtaposition nightmare fuel, and given this is how the album ends it's a much darker conclusion in that apocalypse, no matter what major key chord you tack on to the end of 'X'. That's not subversive or escapist, it's a likely reality, and given how little distinctive character Poppy is given, the larger arc just slides towards doomsday cult cliches. 

Granted, Poppy's lack of more distinctive character even between reboots is starting to get exasperating especially if her iconography is supposed to be inspiring that cult, especially if she's embracing anti-populist symbols like Marie Antoinette, and thus you wind up clinging to snippets to paint more of a picture... and then you start noticing when we do get a human element, it can feel more than a little reflective of the previous year outside of the Poppy veneer. On the one hand, the self-aware questioning directed at Titanic Sinclair's career guidance on 'Hard Feelings' managed to cut surprisingly well, and I appreciated how Grimes was 'dying' while Poppy survived on 'Play Destroy', showing the increased cannibalization of pop acts - but on the other hand, there's more than a bit of defensiveness creeping into 'Fashion After All' and 'Chic Chick', and then there's the title track - look, given this song came after a Poppy reboot interlude I can accept how the concept of gender might blur, and it's not like she doesn't co-opt masculine cliches across the album as a whole, especially on 'Chic Chick'. But in comparison with someone like Kesha who has brought that brashly subversive side since the beginning of her career, when you see in interviews Poppy only started flirting with the idea of blurring the gender binary in her art when 'other celebrities started doing it', it starts feeling even more hollow, especially when the internet culture side of queer spaces would have been an easy step for her if she wanted to explore something even somewhat real. With this, it's just another hole punched in her deconstruction going in a much less compelling direction - a dangerous idea when this project exposes how many ideas were underexplored off the last album, or just abandoned for less interesting or nuanced - but likely more accessible - territory.

And here's the frustrating part: for as critical as I'm being here, it's coming because I like a fair number of these songs on a compositional level. Yes, the Grimes comparison is obvious - more than ever at this point, especially given how the album ends and that Grimes shows up herself - but the commitment to actual groove in the basslines and low-end balanced out with blaring, glittery synths and a technicolor approach to melody is a good one, even if most of the chiptune is pitched to the side in favour of slightly more diverse, oily tones that are allowed to pick up a bit more glitchy and a deeper sense of atmospherics. And this might be the only place where stepping away from the more blatant 'internet' inspiration might have reaped consistent rewards, like the sleek techno touches around 'Fashion After All', the delicate pluckiness of 'Aristocrat' that sound like a riff on Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro', the misty pulse of 'Hard Feelings', the creaking synthetic strings of 'The Rapture Ball', and especially the pop guitars that slice into the final few songs with the squealing crunch owing probably most to late 90s alternative metal and industrial. Seriously, while Poppy is far from the first who's tried to split this difference, I'd argue she's at least as credible as BABYMETAL in this lane and ends the album with probably two of my favourite songs here! But on the flip side, it's impossible to ignore how this also leads to the more conventional songs - we might not be getting trap snares or triplet flows, but between the watery handclap of 'Iconic', the gummy pitch-shifting bass pop of 'In A Minute' that could have been imported from Mike Will Made It circa 2013, and Diplo's obvious grainy synth warp of 'Time Is Up', you can tell they're trying to dilute the formula for accessibility, and that's before you make the comparison to earlier cuts that at least tried for something a bit more unearthly and weird, which even in the production isn't quite materializing. 

But as a whole... look, I'll give Poppy credit where it's due, this is not a bad album, and I understand the direction coming down from the label to push her in this direction - and again, the grooves and hooks remain solid and I won't deny the writing still has some of that distinctive flavor. But man, it's the wrong push across the board, moving Poppy away from the core of her persona towards something increasingly thin and cliched in pop subversion - and given that deconstruction is the foundation of her appeal in all categories, that's a major problem, both here and going forward. And thus for me... yeah, it's a solid 6/10, recommended for the fans, but this might not reflect well on Poppy going forward, and I hope that going into 2019, her course is corrected sooner rather than later.

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