About a month ago Grimes’s third LP Visions was blessed with some widespread critical acclaim. Coming off the extremely catchy single Oblivion, both Pitchfork and the Onion AV Club were confident that despite being released in late January we could be contending with a potential “Album of the Year.” This review does not claim to know whether this prophecy will come true or not, nor will it try to recap what has already been said about the album’s technical achievements—the erratic beats, the bombarding loops, indecipherable witch of a voice Grimes hums and shrieks in—but rather how these unnatural noises have created a surprisingly confessional sound, so that hopefully, regardless of whether you believe the hype or not, you’ll be a bit more inclined to give a listen. I’m certainly happy I did.
We’ll start with the voice. It’s probably the first thing new listeners will be struck by, and most likely the factor to send them to the Skip button. Some say cute alien, some go with echoing banshee, but whatever metaphor you want to give her singing, it is initially foreign. And it never stops moving. There are times when it forms words; other times it just switches octaves. Initially, due to the looping and other electronic flourishes, I pegged her voice as part of the whole, another machine adding to her sound; however, now after multiple listens I understand something much stronger than her lyrics—I hear how she feels. LCD Soundsystem was so refreshing a few years ago because of his compassionate voice and his personal lyrics. It connected to listeners in a way The Knife’s Silent Shout ice vocals never could. Personally, for me Grimes is one of the first vocalists I have heard in the electropop world that still reaches me despite having almost no connection to my conceived notion of a confessional vocalist, especially a female one.
Speaking of her being a girl, there has been much talk of her gender, from her music video where she juxtaposes herself with bros, to her self-drawn, not cutesy, flaming skull album cover. Pitchfork even theorized that girls would be far more likely to fall in love with the album than boys. Perhaps so. This attention is common whenever there is a female with a sound we cannot immediately identify with ‘femininity.’ From my perspective, it’s an album that’s sensitive, not just visceral—a rarity in the field of electronica. When she commands us to “Be a Body,” she is not only asking us to join her on the dance floor, but also ask yourself what are you embodying right now? She’s embodying a girl. And she’s made an album with cold computers sound like an emotional human being. Actually, that does sound like a girl.
Grade: A-
Grade: A-
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