Thunder rattles via the ending of 070 Shake’s tormented album opening, ‘Sin’. It’s a second ushered in by subdued vocals, pummelling drums and electrical guitar, virtually like a reinvented traditional Queen ballad to an influence rock anthem. Immediately, the piano dissipates, the storm passes and a quiet child-like voice beckons you in (“girls and gents, welcome to my present!”) towards a whirring background of ethereal electronica. It’s right here, Shake’s love-laden area odyssey-style storytelling begins.
‘Petrichor’ borrows its cinematic high quality from late ’90s avant-garde thrillers, a foray into sounds which are tightly curated and fantastically direct. Think about Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels inside the sci-fi world-building of Steven Lisberger’s Tron. Songs oscillate between fraught longings of loneliness and queer love (“You’re my reflection / How may I break you,” she sings on ‘Items of You’) to ‘Vagabond’ the place she urges a lover to “give into the consequence of letting me in”.
Taking from the undertaking title – which means the musky, earthy odor of rain – the album flows, including layers to construct its personal texture, scent and sonic palette. Nonetheless, Shake’s weather-filled throughline doesn’t all the time maintain robust. At instances, her experimental playbook feels just a little too unfastened, with songs like ‘Winter Child x New Jersey Blues’ and ‘Track To The Siren’ feeling like wayside adjuncts.
Album standout ‘Blood On Your Arms’, which options emotionally charged spoken phrase poetry from Lily-Rose Depp, serves because the soul of the file. It’s an area the place Shake is brazenly anxious, dramatised and fearful. She caves into her vulnerabilities and wishes, vocalising the extent of her limitless love, confessing: “If I die, I would like you to be the one to kill me / I would like my blood in your palms.”
The singer’s unfiltered admissions and complex manufacturing are the saviours of ‘Petrichor’, even when the lyrics themselves fall quick at instances. However with album nearer ‘Love’, Shake reclaims her tenacious fashion. Over deliberately heavy-handed Auto-Tune and distorted guitar, she transports listeners right into a grand rock-studded goodbye. It rolls out like a love-loaded voicemail you’d go away a accomplice, one that you simply’d hope to play alongside your favorite sapphic indie movie.
Shake has lengthy shared an affinity with the emotional, whether or not on her genre-blending soulful debut ‘Modus Vivendi’, or carving out philosophical raps on her second album, ‘You Can’t Kill Me’. But, on ‘Petrichor’, this depth can really feel overbearing, like a fiery power shot that overstays its welcome, whereas Shake’s lyricism doesn’t all the time reduce as shut as we all know it might probably. It’s an album that, at instances, feels eaten by its ambition. Whereas her phrases don’t all the time ship, ‘Petrichor’ stands greatest when her emotionality and revolutionary soundscape take maintain.
Particulars
- File label: Def Jam Recordings
- Launch date: November 15, 2024
