Just over halfway through her twenties, Ally Evenson has some questions for whoever is in charge: “Am I the one growing up? Will I be more than just a person? Will I be more if I am erased?' On the opening track of her debut album, BLUE SUPER LOVE, she floats in a weightless void of glowing THX Deep Notes, weighing the paths before her: to “have fun in hell or broken heaven.” Evenson chooses violence. Just before its two-minute mark, “Shitty Heaven” breaks into an unexpected, dirty drum 'n' bass vamp—during which, in the accompanying visual, the Detroit singer-songwriter contemplates a oozing head wound and slips on a pair of sunglasses. . Then-wham—Has been hit by a new rush of noise with all the force and pressure of an underwater vacuum explosion or particularly violent Turnstile performance. By dramatically changing the song's momentum twice in just a few minutes, Evenson sets the album's mood as a house with the gas left on, liable to burn out at the stroke of a match.
While Evenson's previous Bandcamp releases fit perfectly into the mold of downcast indie rock, BLUE SUPER LOVE it stands out by leaning heavily on smeared textures—motion blur, the hum of a vocoder, digital camera grain—and sharp edges. The melody on “Where Are You Going?”, one of the sweetest on the record, wouldn't be out of place in the mouth of Gracie Abrams. still, the distortion thumps overhead while the drums thump and pop like something off Bully's last record. Evenson's instincts have always leaned pop, and now she and producer Nydge have created an electrifying widescreen sound to match. “You Poor Thing” is periodically interrupted from its frantic pace by screams and bursts of noise as Evenson's guitar taunts the unfortunate soul on the edge of its vitriol. “You look beautiful / On your knees,” she whispers, and it's hard to tell which lines are coming from her and which are parroting the “golden coaster, fucking freeloader” that is the song's target.
Evenson's voice—that is, both her writing voice and her actual tone—puts her in the incredibly rough pedigree of that dog, Veruca Salt and Charlie Bliss. The way her tongue dances around the phrase “fucking friends” in “Cross My Fingers” infuses his otherwise saccharine lyrics with a perfect dose of venom. Meanwhile, “I want you, and I need you, so come for me/and I want you, and I need you, so comfort me” from “Something In The Water” is Evenson's twisted version of “ come right on me— I mean camaraderie,” delivered atop a bed of mellow pop-rock that fizzes like real Pop Rocks. The narration in BLUE SUPER LOVE it also gets help from carefully developed sound effects. The breakdown of “Something In The Water” touches Evenson's voice side-by-side as she sings “I'm always here, I'm always there,” and on “One Trick Pony,” an arsenal of glitches captures the effect of the twist. to the ideal lover in real time.
