From the same school of finely turned disco wiggles as Arthur Russell’s poppiest moments, “Check Your Face” romances common sense—Wilkins urging it to “season me in reasoning,” and coming on so strong that there’s a good chance this would-be seducer doesn’t understand the equanimous object of her affections at all. It speaks subtly and incisively to how concepts like common sense, boundaries, and bandwidths have become buzzwords, but also sees the delusion of trying to conclusively attain them as endearing, as the coolest of basslines contrasts Wilkins’ exaggerated purr. The dreamier “Oh Minutiae” comes at the devotional affect from a different angle, a waltzing torch song played on what sounds like a cheap keyboard about the tiny rewards to be found in the world around you: the seaweed, “funny-looking oak leaves,” the “snowflakes and cornflakes” of a Norwegian winter. “They say the devil lies in the details,” Wilkins sings, coining another lovely, wonky aphorism: “I think that’s just a phrase … Not all good things are named after saints.”
These funny, weird, tender songs are cast in a softer light than Wilkins’ previous albums, not least the unsettling SAP. Some may lament the lack of eeriness on Oh My God, but her adept songcraft, enveloping melodies, and mood-conjuring is sure-footed and enchanting—recalling Marry Me-era St. Vincent and the uncanniness of latter-day Cate Le Bon—and not short on off-kilter detail. Opener “The Wannabe” is straightforwardly rapturous, bluesy neo-soul that never lapses into pastiche because the sensuality Wilkins is craving is not rote carnality but that of basic human feeling: “I’m not a sculpture,” she sings. “I’ll take the frustrations/Just let me back into my body again.” “Help, I’ve Been Put Into Context!” laments the pinned-butterfly indignation of being incorrectly perceived with wry humor—“Stuck up on my hind legs/Speak in languages I never knew”—and tactile, rehumanizing beauty: chimes like tapped jars, snippets of soul drum fills, gently climbing acoustic chords.
The fragility of all this is underpinned by the potential destruction lingering around the edges. “My Berenice,” a tale of obsession and breakup, is suspiciously pure and loving until the end flares with hysteria: “They say you dig your own grave,” sings Wilkins, building to a fit of pique, “but I dug hers too.” A cover of Shirley Collins’ 1960 song “Space Girl” (subtitled “(Shirley’s)”) is a prescient tale of a girl acting against her own interests, told through her mother’s warning against the dangerous lure of space technology; it winds up with Wilkins shrieking in a pained voice against sharp, bullheaded guitar. “And I Have a Blessed Life” is an insistent incantation of gratitude that clings on amid invocations of dread and seismic bass. “Life is Nietzsche on the beach/And then you die,” Wilkins sings in an ecstatic conclusion.
Credit: pitchfork.com
