empathogen

So the album is weird. Willow is taking her sound and mostly shifting it towards jazz and funk whilst occassionally retaining some of her pop punk sensibilities. The tracjs when she goes full jazz like the opening track and no words 1 & 2 are the biggest surprises by just how good they are including her vocal performances and scatting on the tracks.

There are a few other tracks on here that go full acoustic guitar with this vibe I get from like, flamenco spanish guitar in the tone in ancient girl and pain for fun which are solid but the additiob of St. Vincent on the latter kind of overshadows Willow and highlights a few flaws in her vocal performances.

And then there are in my opinion, the wildest successes here, the tracks that combine the pop punk and jazz in a way that creates some of the most unique stuff I've heard. symptom of life and between i and she are the standouts here in which there are elements of the best stuff from Willow's latest record with some of the looser, jazzier parts of her new sound in absolute standouts.

However, these also end up as some of the bigger misses. Willow's pop punk wails tend to not really blend well with the jazz all the time, tracks like down show it a little alongside the aforementioned pain for fun, however, I think track 5 false self is the buggest example of this going wrong. The clash of vibes just leads to some extremely unlistenable clashes, some of the least enjoyable elements of Willow's songwriting in her past few records, albeit nowhere near emo girl.

Overall, this record is a pleasant surprise way more often than the slight clashes that end up as head scratchers. I can't wait to see where Willow goes from here.