Pop music continues to be fertile ground and a privileged channel for emotional communication. It will always be daring to tackle mundane yet complex themes, invariably anchored in the enigma and fascination of human existentialism. Excluding, of course, the oversaturated products that dominate an increasingly algorithmic and homogeneous industry, it is from this domain that some of the most original contemporary poetry of recent decades has emerged.
Swedish artist Molly Nilsson has made her mark in this field, emerging as the perfect voice of her generation, if you will, in this timeline we are currently experiencing. As a child, her aspiration to one day become a film director already pointed to her nature as a chronicler: observation, narration, and projection of stories. It was in Berlin, in early adulthood, that she devoted herself to songwriting. The confessional tone mirrors a political consciousness, where repetition seeks to resist alienation.
It is through her own Dark Skies Association that we have been presented with a discography of rare cohesion and intense activity. There are already eleven albums in her career, sustained by a punk ethic of incessant work and a constant search for innovation. Zenith will be an ex libris for many; however, the more recent Imaginations and Extreme demonstrate a clear need for experimentation—within a very personal notion of what that approach means. Without compromising or conceding, Nilsson has unveiled a fascinating world of damp synthesizers, hazy rhythms, and an icy voice, somewhere between Nico, Liz Fraser, and Gina X.
The new album, Amateur, refines Nilsson’s material and elevates her unique presence. Rescuing the etymology of the word, it assumes itself as a true letter of intent: the original idea of someone devoted to something and its subsequent cultural distortion, associated with a lack of knowledge or experience. What remained unexplained in this transition? It is these lost points that the Swedish artist enhances in the form of pop anthems that one feels like calling timeless. Not least because there is an assumed taste for paradox here: from the anachronistic to the futuristic, from the melancholic to the hopeful, from the real to the dreamlike. A queen in the sphere we inhabit — and one that so many still do not know. Unmissable.
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What comes after refusing the urge to keep keeping up? On his latest record Overpass, Toronto- and Lisbon-based artist Scott Hardware scores the ache and tragicomedy of what it takes to meet the moment. Equally conjuring the haunting allure of peak-Tinseltown glamour and the bleary silhouettes of ’90s industrial pop, Hardware sets the stage to examine futility, with a partial sneer, a half-gritted grin, and the resolve to yield to the gravity of the world.
Revising the sonic vernacular for off-Broadway musicals and old Hollywood grandeur, Hardware spent the last three years meticulously designing each sound on the album by hand. Recorded in Lisbon, Overpass came together between extended sundown walks in dilapidated economic centers and a flurry of faces from around the world during online lessons. Its palette pulls from the lush opulence of Jacques Demy, the romantic desolation of Hong Kong’s New Wave Cinema and Leslie Cheung, and the maximalist existentialism of 2000s HBO classics; each influence refracted through Hardware’s idiosyncratic lens.
The result is an instinctual grab bag of patient ballads, conspicuous waltzes, and propulsive riffs. It’s a campy rework of disaffected clichés; an open embrace of pomp and circumstance for an audience of one, or none. Overpass is a reminder that, despite the backdrop of an ever-tightening and grievous world, creating becomes an act of timeless and stubborn necessity.
“This album took a long time to make. I was tasked with making a laptop record from relative isolation while working a very low-paying online job. What came out is campy, and a bit bitter – a little smirk of a record. I hope you like it.”