![]() ![]() “Complete Book of Roses” is a universe unto itself, Birgy singing over a tinny drum machine and serrated guitars about a painful, never-ending restlessness: “I’ve got every book out,” she sings, “And the warmth of the words is unnerving.” A guitar solos in the background like a phantom limb, as the beat blooms into a kind of frenetic, moorless samba Birgy’s voice builds and crumbles, more guttural yelp and exclamation than concrete words. When not in this mode, Birgy still captures the beautiful, occasionally petrifying vastness of her earlier music. Life, and Another felt like the musical equivalent of overturning a log to see the insect life teeming beneath these bullish, ambitious, chunkily melodic songs crush some of that nuance. For the most part, though, these details are obliterated by the barnstorming synths that coat the early tracks squint, and they could resemble old songs by Future Islands or Lower Dens. The album still possesses tiny pearls: There’s an aqueous, almost imperceptible whisper beneath Birgy’s vocals on “Cactus People” that’s cool and deeply discomfiting, as if recorded by her own shadow Birgy’s description of freaking out a potential boyfriend (“I really scared him/Because all I talk about with him is/Beheading young men”) is one of her most casually hilarious lyrics ever. These songs are booming and vivid and catchy, but they almost underserve Birgy the nuances and intricacies of her music are what make it feel so precious and self-contained. On the neon-lit “Love Is,” the kind of pulsating Italo anthem that maybe only the disco divas on an After Dark compilation can really pull off, she tells a lover she’ll “leave my door unlocked/Just in case you want to stop by and let me get lost in your eyes.” On the soaring “Cactus People,” she begs someone not to “leave tonight,” as the taut pulse of drum machines and live drums, both by Big Thief’s James Krivchenia, rattle underneath. Before the album slips into existential dread and malaise, she makes room for a handful of songs that seem to find at least a little solace in the idea of human connection. It feels hopeful, until moments later, when she lets out a chilling, mournful howl.īirgy has said that End of Everything was inspired by both personal tragedy-a home invasion and subsequent assault she experienced-and the ecological terror of the 21st century. “It’s something I’m trying to commit to/The all and everything,” Birgy sings at one point. These songs are dogged, searching for some kind of brightness amid universal dejection. Across these desolate and distended tracks, Birgy comes across a little like a sci-fi heroine, trekking across the surface of some gloomy and unnerving planet. End of Everything begins with a suite of propulsive, exhilarating synth-pop tracks, but it soon settles into an eerie, claustrophobic take on prog, its second half devoted almost entirely to tense, exploratory passages. The vast, open world of Life, and Another has been replaced with harsher terrain: Environments built with brittle coldwave synths, funereal piano lines, and howling saxophones. ![]() On End of Everything, a newly sober Birgy is working with far more intensity. ![]()
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