Singer, songwriter, and producer Melanie Martinez makes glossy, darkish pop with a satiric edge and actual emotional chunk. Martinez debuted together with her unbelievable 2015 LP Cry Child, an idea album a few younger lady who will get kidnapped and finally kills her captor that’s filled with glowing, self-aware tunes like “Pacify Her” and “Dollhouse.” She adopted it with 2019’s Ok-12, in addition to a characteristic movie of the identical identify, constructing a faithful cult following within the course of. Martinez has come a great distance from being the hopeful teenager who made Christina Aguilera’s eyes roll when she competed on The Voice.
This February, Martinez obtained us prepared for her subsequent chapter by sharing a 30-second visible that confirmed a close-up of the phrases “RIP Cry Child” etched into a large mushroom surrounded by candles at a gravesite. It was a last goodbye to her beloved Lolita-like character. Now, together with her new album Portals, Martinez is “again from the useless.”
She has discovered a brand new muse: a pink-skinned, four-eyed fairy creature that’s caught between Earth and the afterlife. And she or he’s utilizing that character to ship her most introspective lyrics and sounds that transfer outdoors her sonic consolation zone. Musically, Martinez strays from the alt-pop sounds of her previous to discover pop-rock songwriting, driving drum beats, and voice filters. “All the songs on this album are based mostly on past-life-regression remedy books I’ve been studying for a number of years now,” she stated of the document. “All of them disguised with earthly themes for double/triple which means, to create a frequency for people to narrate to whereas nonetheless right here on Earth.” In terms of making formidable idea information, there aren’t many artists in her class.
“Void” opens with an ethereal atmosphere, earlier than Martinez’s candy vocals arrive over a gritty, guitar-driven observe as she displays on her low shallowness, merging the id she’s invented for the album together with her personal real-life expertise. “Like a priest behind confession partitions, I choose myself/Kneeling on a metallic grater,” she chants. “Gentle Bathe” goes in the other way, setting comfortable guitar strumming atop naked manufacturing. It’s a far cry from what we’d anticipate from Martinez, with lyrics that take an uncharacteristically optimistic and uncomplicated view of affection: “All my anger, disappointment, remorse disappeared, it’s insanity.” For followers mourning the Cry Child period, there are songs like “Spider Internet,” with its xylophone melody, which can be harking back to Martinez’s musical origins, in addition to darker moments like “The Contortionist,” with sound results that actually sound like bones cracking and dramatic keyboards that recall Ok-12’s “Nurse’s Workplace.”
A part of the “previous life regression” she promised with the LP arrives in songs like “Nymphology,” “Moon Cycle,” and “Evil,” which overtly present a brand new perspective on her previous expertise, particularly her relationship with alt-rocker Oliver Tree, who has referenced her in lyrics and has used an actress who regarded like Martinez in a music video to mock her. On “Moon Cycle,” she sings jarringly crude lyrics a few man who calls for intercourse with a lady who’s having her interval (“Blood swimming turned him amphibious”), whereas lacing her lyrics with direct references to Tree’s music. And on the standout “Evil,” she elevates a searing synth-rock observe with scathing lyrics: “Hope you by no means cope, hope you slip on cleaning soap/Crack your head like an egg, wanna see the yolk.” Ouch.
The LP ends with “Womb,” a metaphor for her personal musical rebirth and that of her character’s, earlier than the album loops again to repeat a phrase we heard at its begin: “Life is loss of life is life is loss of life.” With Portals, Martinez delivers an effortlessly ingenious, mature document that reintroduces her as an artist unafraid to begin from scratch and sort out advanced, tough concepts. She isn’t hiding behind her baby-pink prosthetics. She’s letting us inside her world, and the story she tells is crystal clear.
