Grimes – Miss Anthropocene
(4AD)
Reviewed by Bridie Chetwin-Kelly.
I will be the first to admit, I never really jumped on the Grimes bandwagon. Objectively, her tracks ‘Oblivion’ and ‘Genesis’ are bops but that’s about as deep as I ever got. Her fifth LP, Miss Anthropocene hits a bit different from what she has done before whilst also remaining true to her sound/sounds.
Unequivocally, the state of the world is getting Grimes down and this LP is straight gloom and doom. Each song represents a different god somehow and Anthropocene means the moment human activity influenced the climate and the environment… climate change has got her good. This is the music of someone really going through it, shrouded by darkness – it’s heavy, moodier and as a result, better than a lot of music she has made previously.
She recently told Apple Music that Miss Anthropocene deals with death and was her outlet when dealing with the loss of her close friend and manager Lauren Valencia, who passed away from cancer in 2019. It still has the typical Grimes almost fairyesqe vocals, layered in a way that could only be described as Enya-like but with a sort of naivety in her voice. On the track ‘So Heavy I fell Through The Earth’ this particularly stands out.
Miss Anthropocene as a whole is genre rich, from ballads to nu-metal, to experimental synth-pop and even as far as Bollywood (check the track ‘4EM’). It is also deeply emotional in parts – ‘Delete Forever’ is just one of the tracks that deals with suicide.
Of the whole LP, ‘Violence’ would be the most typical Grimes sounding song, produced by i_o who has ties to the likes of Deadmau5 and JAUZ. It’s got all the Grimes basics, over synthed vocals, some random sounds and lyrics that can only be described as contextual.
I’m not going to hide the fact that I’m not familiar with any of the featured artists on this LP. I do know that ‘Darkseid’ was originally meant to be a collaboration with Lil Uzi Vert which didn’t work out and instead close friend Aristophanes aka Pan Wei Ju collabed instead, during the track she spits in mandarin about a friend who committed suicide. As much as her sound remains uniquely her (props for that), I am not entirely sure that her lyric writing skills have me convinced. However, I wouldn’t assume people listen to Grimes for her lyrics?
The likes of ‘We Appreciate Power’ (produced by Bloodpop) which is more Nu Metal than anything else is still one of my favourite songs, even pre this LP. Standouts off Miss Anthropecne include ‘Darkseid’, ‘4EM’ and ‘Delete Forever’ which are all in separate genres.
Maybe I am not a dark enough person to totally “get it” (my favourite pop star is Carly Rae Jepson) but all in all its a good LP if you just listen to the music for what it is.
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