Wallsocket: 9

underscores | Art Pop, Indietronica | released 22-09-2023

It was pretty much love at first sight with underscores first record fishmonger, and I carried a lot of expectations with her established style into this one. That was a massive mistake that led to me taking almost a year to fully digest it. So when i hit the insane tone shift of tracks 1 and 2 to 3 and 4 it completely threw me off and gave me a lot of complicated feelings.

The "main" tracks of this album like the two it opened with are fantastic indie rock and dance blends, and the downtempo moody tracks interspersed, while jarring, are incredibly well made. Horror movie soundtrack is so wildly different from the track that immediately follows it; its quiet unnerving vocals backed by nothing but a buzzing acoustic string is a universe away from Old money bitch's loud flanderized 2010s electro pop. These are both amazing tracks, but that discrepancy is hard to get used to.

I know this is a concept album, but the storytelling in each isolated song was enough that I didn't pay much mind to it. It definitely opens strong in that aspect with Cops and robbers, a tale from a crackhead bragging about his genius plan to steal money from retirement funds at the bank he works at. Shoot to kill, kill your darlings is another story that hits me quite personally, as it mirrors my own experiences from high school. And then Johnny johnny johnny, about a child predator. And its not coy about it, it says the quiet parts out loud. Its so real the way its told makes my fucking skin crawl. I cant overstate how well made every track on this record is.

One of the first tracks i really connected to was Geez louise, something of a panicked trans anthem with a god damn square dancing bridge. Its outro sets up the last leg of this record which is much more downlow and even made me tear up a little listening back again. Uncanny long arms has an incredible drop that remixes the demo that became Kinko's field trip 2006 back on fishmonger and is such a highlight of the album that i couldn't not bring it up.