Pop music feels cursedly literal proper now: Ariana Grande is singing about how she “spent a lot on remedy”; Billie Eilish’s Barbie track is a transparently easy plot abstract of Barbie; Kacey Musgraves’ new album is a ripped-from-the-group-chat account of going by means of a breakup and communing with nature. It’s not an issue unique to A-listers. It’s Over, the second album by London producer and singer Tatyana, is riddled with literalism, therapyspeak, and phrases which might be profoundly overused on TikTok: “I’m down dangerous,” “touching grass,” “appearing like a fan.” One wonders if there’s a brand new pharmaceutical doing the rounds that saps a pop star’s need for subtext and thriller.
Fortunately, Tatyana has an ace up her sleeve. It’s Over might undergo from a deeply trendy affliction, nevertheless it’s additionally a supreme pleasure to take heed to, a glamorous, fine-tuned dance-pop file crammed with brazen, mercenary hooks and hypnotic synth strains that sound squelchy and spiky on the identical time. Whilst her lyrics dip into the sans-serif blandness of up to date pop, Tatyana manages to refute its different deadly flaw—melody-averse mushiness—with songs that bullishly power their means into your mind.
It’s Over was produced by Tatyana with Mikko Gordon (Idles, Arcade Hearth), and it feels of a chunk with high-saturation early-career data by artists like Tirzah and the Knife. Like these artists, Tatyana usually alludes to analog home and techno however not often dives in totally. As an alternative, she takes formal instruction from these genres: A part of the explanation songs like “Down Dangerous” and “Maintain My Hand” are so punishingly catchy is that their hooks repeat time and again like samples in a traditional Detroit monitor, typically layering the phrase on the beat and different instances throwing it in haphazardly. Regardless of their condensed types, these songs play masterfully with rigidity and reduction in a means that makes their restricted emotional landscapes really feel like a function, not a bug.
At different instances, Tatyana’s vocals can really feel mismatched together with her manufacturing. “It’s Over,” a blocky, lurching monitor on which she sings about feeling emotionally risky, options the form of winkingly dramatic efficiency that may have felt extra at dwelling on her 2022 debut Deal with Me Proper, which dealt extra in clear, hovering ’80s-inspired pop. “Out of Time,” a stunning, melancholy ballad, is underserved by its grand, virtually OPN-esque synth maelstrom finale, and by the truth that it arrives two songs after “I Do Care (& That’s Okay),” a slow-building piece of hazy electronica that does a greater job with the identical conceit. However Tatyana’s heat, smoky voice is completely at dwelling on “Management” and “Nothing Is True, All the things Is Attainable,” two simmering late-night home tracks that really feel equal components moody and cheeky.
These brighter moments are let down by lyrics that veer into whole glibness. On “Down Dangerous,” clumsy strains like “All I do is really feel my emotions/I write my foolish little songs every night” stall an in any other case riotous, sharply written track; on “We’re Again,” the heady thought of a possible reunion with an ex is undercut by a repeated hook of “we’re so again,” a phrase that’s overused and considerably meaningless. Tatyana says that she wrote the lyrics for It’s Over in the best way she would communicate to her pals, however the result’s an album that’s wildly proficient in a single space and completely underwhelming in one other—so off-balanced that you just really feel prefer it might topple at any second.
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