“One other Life,” the first track on PinkPantheress’ long-awaited debut album, Heaven Is aware of, opens with the ominous sound of an electrified cathedral organ. The collaboration with Nigerian musician Rema, wherein the British singer wakes up subsequent to her associate solely to seek out him useless, fittingly appears like a funeral. “Are you able to please get up, babe? Now you’re scaring me,” she sings, earlier than coming to phrases along with her actuality: “Guess you died right this moment, and I can’t consider it. You misplaced your soul, you can’t cease this.” It’s the identical sound of looming darkness that appeared within the one-minute trailer for the album, launched forward of its arrival. Within the clip, a person with a rough voice deeply contrasting to the singer’s personal angel-soft tone ponders: “The primary time will likely be totally different for everybody. What’s going to your expertise be like?” That thriller — whether or not he’s referring to a primary encounter with what awaits on the opposite facet, or an individual’s first time dwelling — sparks one thing in PinkPantheress, who embarks on a seek for which means throughout the 13-song document.
PinkPantheress’ preoccupation with mortality because it pertains to romance — or the methods wherein life continues for everybody again dwelling whereas she’s hundreds of miles away — will strike acquainted themes for listeners who’ve adopted her rise up to now. She explored comparable notions on her 2021 mixtape, To Hell With It, and final 12 months’s Take Me Residence EP. On these releases, U.Okay. storage and drum-and-bass collided with obscure dance samples because the singer crafted bite-size glances into the anxiousness surrounding fame, loss, and rising up. Her revised method to the sound and vogue of the early 2000s instantly engraved her signature on popular culture, however she fastidiously maintained her bodily anonymity for so long as she might and to at the present time safeguards her actual title. Her early, nameless beginnings on TikTok and Soundcloud left her with a separate place to retreat. The songs on these releases barely reached the two-minute mark. When she carried out reside, she was on and off the stage in a flash, her purse hardly ever ever leaving her shoulder.
However all through Heaven Is aware of, PinkPantheress appears aware of how excessive the stakes have been raised. The songs hover comfortably between two and 4 minutes. The album additionally marks the primary occasion wherein the 22-year-old singer-songwriter-producer recorded exterior of London. Collaborations with massive names like Mura Masa, Greg Kurstin, London on Da Monitor, Money Cobain, and others led her to Los Angeles, the place she has additionally put down roots over the previous two years. The farther she swims out, the quicker the shoreline begins to vanish. “What number of instances do I dream of reaching out?” she asks on “Blue.”
The thrill of her new atmosphere may be heard within the anxious tales she weaves throughout the album. The reside devices she introduces mingle with layers of harmonies that present the sentiments she explores with wealthy sonic and emotional textures. She communicates a novel curiosity concerning the folks and sources she now has entry to, and a way of marvel that manifests in twisted “what if” eventualities. PinkPantheress’ collaborators on the album additionally play with concepts of connection and distance — when to open up and when to tug again — like Ice Spice’s emotional tug of warfare on “Boys a Liar, Pt. 2,” Central Cee’s cheeky infidelity on “Good to Meet You,” and Kelela’s resistance towards being the primary to commit on “Bury Me.”
Heaven Is aware of is cut up instantly down the center by “Web Child,” a starry-eyed interlude nodding to PinkPantheress’ on-line roots. “My SDs and USBs, you need all of these, and now you wish to borrow my garments,” she thrums. “You’re a needy man, however I suppose I type of like that,” she sings, nonetheless familiarizing herself with giving and receiving consideration. “You got here on too robust, however I suppose I type of like that.” For somebody who has maintained such a guarded angle throughout her temporary rise, such cautious vulnerability can really feel like an enormous threat.
Fittingly, proper after that second of hesitant connection, tragedy reminds her why she remained weary for therefore lengthy. Introducing the second half of the album, “Ophelia” begins in an identical strategy to “One other Life,” besides it’s lighter, just like the mild strum of a harp. The serenity is disrupted by the sound of police sirens and submerged vocals as PinkPantheress narrates a cautionary story about how ignoring your instincts can get you killed. “I can’t consider the worry in me once I had knocked in your door now/And once I went inside and realized I’m the one one which arrived, I want I stayed at dwelling in mattress ’trigger then I might need survived,” she sings, successfully changing into the tracks’s titular drowned Shakespearean heroine due to her personal naiveté.
On “True Romance,” PinkPantheress delivers her personal play on Girl Gaga’s “Paparrazi.” Over hand claps and acoustic-guitar strums affected by the clicks of flashing cameras and cheering crowds, she yearns to face out. “I’m within the crowd, are you able to see my hand?” she asks, pleading, “Deliver me on tour, assist me perceive.” It’s deliciously obsessive and wholly immersive, mirroring the urgency of her fantastical visions on “The Aisle,” the place she haunts the one which bought away. Even when she’s faking a relationship with an alcoholic and her fairytale romance is falling aside on the R&B-tinged “Really feel Full,” the singer’s devotion runs deep.
Cash is PinkPantheress’ different true object of affection on the document. However her emotions towards it are simply as unfamiliar and unsure as her romantic explorations. It could provide her safety, but it surely additionally indicators potential destruction. She wonders what would occur if she had been to lose all of it financially (“Mosquito” and “Blue”), romantically (the pop triumph “Able to Love”), and by way of her newfound sense of movie star (the dizzying electro-pop minimize “Emotions,” the place she sings, “I understand that I’m peaking too early/However I don’t need that making you are concerned/’Trigger nobody ever instructed me to”).
But when PinkPantheress typically appears adrift in apprehension and loneliness, she inhabits the LP’s totally different purgatorial states with the identical confidence that made her early releases so interesting. She’s by no means fairly distressed, or at the least not sufficient to really lose contact with no matter appears to be eternally slipping away — be it love, cash, or life itself. On Heaven Is aware of, when PinkPantheress hits a useless finish, she simply builds a brand new street ahead from scratch.
