No one can remove TikTok rollers from their beloved shoelace—not fatigue, not the US Senate. Gen Z loves the '90s rock subgenre as much as a worn-in pair of Uggs, and through TikTok, they've helped facilitate its modern revival. But if every teenager was fit to spread the good word, there would be fewer paintings of Joan of Arc. Not everyone can have the reach of 19-year-old Natalie Lu, a.k.a. Wisp, whose 2023 debut single “Your face” spawned thousands of TikTok plays and, now, Interscope has released her debut EP. Pandora.
For a while, “Your face” inspired people to post sullen slideshows demanding romance and videos longing for pink supermarket cookies. The song, currently approaching 50 million Spotify streams, is a spring storm. his vocals sound wet and distant like Lost Dove or Deftones, and his guitar parts are made of frozen cobwebs or Souvlaki. Months passed. Wisp assured her fans that she was “a broke student”, not an industry factory, and then signed off. Now her TikTok and Instagram are filled with shades of blue and angel wings—creating the world for Pandora, which features “Your Face” and other subtle acts of shoe worship. But Pandora it never gets more interesting than this.
So every song Pandora he expertly fries his melodies and Lou's breathy voice hangs over them like an avalanche. “See You Soon” opens with the sound of the wind whistling and ends with Lou vowing, “I'd give all the stars to see you soon.” It crackles and stings — it feels good to hear. The most appealing aspect of shoegaze is the way it takes shiny, sexy things – sporty car guitar riffs, thunderous drums, Kazu Makino's singing voice – and covers them with pond scum. The purpose of this distortion is to make you think you have an anonymous valentine: You don't need rock'n'roll glamour, because restraint is more impressive.
But amorphous repetition… not so much. That's the problem with a wall of cotton candy like “Enough For You,” which follows “Your Face” and is generally indistinguishable from it. Like the rest Pandora, “Enough for you” soars on Lu's windchime vocals and a loose guitar loop. it sounds like unwrapping a Twizzler, and that's as deep as it gets. “Your eyes look into mine/But the sparks don't seem to fly,” Lou exhales like she's talking sleep. Another sweet nothing on an EP frozen with them.
But what about the other things – painful things, rejection, dark nights and sinister crows – that Wisp's favorite references, bands like Have a Nice Life and Whirr, turn into unforgettable art? Pandora he doesn't touch them. The EP has a filter on, reusing only the best parts of shoegaze without expanding on it. That's what a lot of music on TikTok is for, to be fair – to luxuriate in the reminder. It will not advance a species or your life, but few things do. You don't have to give up your daily routine. There's love in it, at least.
