The teen queen of dark, teenage bedroom pop returns with her second LP, astonishingly mature, with supremely low-key, close-mic intimacy, and innovative songs about inevitable concerns - stardom, the difficulty of privacy and relationships and all their associated dangers. What’s so impressive about Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell and her co-writing partner and brother Finneas is their skill in minimalism. So many superstars before them, including Lady Gaga, feel compelled to put out banging pop, but they make restraint an artform, a whispering, simmering collection of songs that capture bottled screams in a haze of smoke. NDA describes an encounter with a pretty boy who must sign the aforementioned non-disclosure agreement. Overheated addresses the terrors of social media attacks. Getting Older is not merely about that, but also, subtly, about sexual coercion, as is, more directly, Your Power. Therefore I Am is a piece of brilliantly expressed weariness, wrapped in catchy pop music, Oxytocin pulses mesmerically, Goldwing is decorated in a clever loop, the entire album is filled with clever sounds and production quirks, and the heavily ironic title track is not some big hit formula, but a woozy, dreamy acoustic guitar number that morphs into a sizzling piece of stormy rock with shades of Radiohead. Somehow Eilish has managed to make an album about being isolated in fame fascinatingly innovative with full of light and shade, or at least shade and darker shade, without seeming self-indulgent. Out on Darkroom / Interscope Records.
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