The album’s manufacturing, helmed by guitarist Alex Robertshaw, is at the very least immaculate. Each sound is handled as delicately as in minimal techno, as if every was made to face out on it personal; the littlest synth line sparks, and the guitars gleam like a galaxy manufactured from sweet. Higgs’ vocals are clear and processed, his emotion as uncooked as a 3D-printed steak. It’s one of many solely components that basically nails the band’s man-meets-machine transient.
“Jennifer,” with a wiggly, romantic New Order guitar line, is a specific spotlight. Within the verses, Higgs presents his protagonist: Jennifer, a suicidal girl and potential sufferer of home violence, who longs for an escape whereas all of the exits seem sealed off. The despondency of the verses is balanced with a hopeful chorus, as Higgs encourages her to maintain in search of a means out. With no brainy modular synths or cyborgian conceits concerned, it’s one of many few songs that isn’t overwrought, and, by the way, the one one which confronts trauma with a human coronary heart.
But there’s no saving the album’s second half. “Metroland,” a sci-fi-meets-country monitor, retains you at a barge pole’s distance with its kitschy schmaltz and nonsense lyrics: “Kevin are you able to think about it?/The escalator inhaling a hydra bowl,” Higgs sings. Then there’s “Shark Week,” which comprises frankly unforgivable strains like “He’s Obama within the streets however he thinks he’s Osama within the sheets.” You’d hope that these have been the work of the AI. Maybe they’re simply an excuse to usher in some form of attention-grabbing devices: Higgs advised Apple Music that Robertshaw advised that he write a track utilizing sure chords, “as a result of he had this particular synth that did cool stuff with chords that had 4 notes in them.” Higgs tries to steadiness the zaniness of the verses with seemingly heartfelt refrains (“Do you suppose you bought everybody below your management? If you haven’t acquired anybody, anybody in any respect”), however the sticky-sweet choruses merely curdle amid all that would-be acid wit.
Uncooked Information Really feel could be essentially the most assured album Every thing Every thing have ever launched, however in a means that feels deeply hubristic. If this album have been an individual, it’d be that pompous, motormouthed philosophy undergraduate who treats seminars like prolonged soliloquies—believing in his potential to impart Earth-shattering truths, regardless of not likely saying a lot in any respect. That man could be endearing; he’s energetic and has an infectious curiosity in expertise’s results on the human spirit. However in terms of expressing his concepts, a lot much less his personal feelings, he’s acquired a protracted option to go—not in contrast to the neural internet Higgs used to write down his lyrics.
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