-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Ambient * Ethereal *
Artist..: Princess Chelsea
Album...: The Great Cybernetic Depression
GENRE....: Electronic
STYLE....: Indie Pop, Synth-pop
LABEL....: Lil' Chief SCENE.....: 2015-11-30
BITRATE..: 875 kbps avg STORE.....: 2015-00-00
ENCODER..: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -V TRACKS....: 10
SIZE.....: 278.0MB SOURCE....: CD
URL..: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Cybernetic_Depression
- TRACKLIST
1 When The World Turns Grey 4:14
2 Is It All OK? 4:05
3 No Church On Sunday 4:58
4 Too Many People 5:02
5 We Are Very Happy 4:56
6 We Were Meant 2 B 4:45
7 Winston Crying On The Bathroom Floor 2:05
8 We Are Strangers 4:51
9 We're So Lost 3:49
10 All The Stars 4:32
Total Playtime: 43:17
Constant connectivity brings constant alienation, a paradox that's worried
everyone from Parkay Quarts to Unknown Mortal Orchestra in the past year.
Princess Chelsea, the songwriting project of Auckland-based singer Chelsea
Nikkel, enters the fray with her second album, The Great Cybernetic
Depression. Singing in a light deadpan against wild, bright production,
Chelsea doesn't decry the Internet outright, nor does she revel in its
potential utopianism. She skirts both easy roads to present an album whose
lyrical content cuts hard lines against its pastel hues.
The Great Cybernetic Depression allegedly takes place 10 years in the future,
when human relationships are even shallower and more atomized than they are
now. The feeling of scrolling through a potential love interest's Instagram
for half an hour hangs thick over the album's atmosphere; Chelsea packs
anxiety flat and slick into her disaffected delivery. There is longing here,
and it comes through in lyrics like "I will love you from far away/ Just not
quite enough." But it never breaks her careful, polished facade.
Formerly Chelsea's partner on the runaway YouTube hit "The Cigarette Duet",
Jonathan Bree returns for a few more numbers, but instead of lending depth to
the album's world, he simply emphasizes its flatness. Bree and Chelsea both
sing in easy, back-and-forth melodies, like they're performing a lullaby or
the jingle to an instructional video. Even the lyrics tend to stick to
monosyllables. The duet "Is It All OK?" indulges in some degree of
world-building, hinting at an apocalyptic event that decimated the whole
planet a decade ago. Crystalline arpeggios roll in waves behind both singers,
and the beats branch out, but Chelsea and Bree's voices march on, affectless.
Instead of retreating to guitar and piano as emblems of a pre-computerized
past, Chelsea melts both instruments into a synth-heavy mix. She even pushes
them to their most comical extremes; "When the World Turns Grey" and "We Were
Meant 2 B" both ripple with hot, sweet guitar solos like something yanked
from the Guns N' Roses songbook and performed by a Guitar Center hopeful.
They come out of nowhere, erupting from sugarplum synth decor just in time
for you to realize that the songs have been power ballads all along. The
space between accelerationist pop music and '80s hair metal has never looked
so small.
The album's lead single and clear standout, "Too Many People" teeters on the
fine edge that the rest of The Great Cybernetic Depression slips around.
Chelsea sings of a city packed to the brim with miserable souls as keyboard
lines sparkle beneath her, like "Eleanor Rigby" recast in Swarovski. Her
lyrics are simple and her melodies even simpler, but the song hits like a
fable marking an essential truth of her isolated post-urban condition. The
Beatles' lonely Liverpool became our own lonely laptop screens: a million
windows glowing, and none of them unlocked. Princess Chelsea presses
something deep and sad between two narrow panes of glass: Everyone is closer
to everyone else, but everyone is more scattered by the glut.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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* NuHS we miss you! *
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