Label
Chemical X
634457003781
- The versatile New York artist turns to watery love songs for the club.
- Eartheater's music has touched upon heady themes; the philosophical, the body and the unspoken. But the vein coursing through her catalog is the ability to produce emotionally evocative work that obliterates your core. Each project unveils the inspiring curiosity of an undaunted artist, consistently pushing herself to explore both her talent and the intricacies of human experience. Classically trained but also a formidable autodidact, Alexandra Drewchin first dipped her toes into the world of electronic music with 2018's IRISIRI, her most recent album, which presented an innovative juxtaposition between folk music, silky strings and clamorous techno. Though produced this past summer, Trinity feels like its dreamy, flirtatious B-side.
Thematically, water, in each of its three potential forms (liquid, solid, gas), is central to the LP. These phases are almost as malleable as the relationships she describes throughout. Sugar-coated and atmospheric, Drewchin's lyrics are often loaded, unrestrained calls to a distant lover. This erotic tension is indulged in tracks like "Supersoaker," where she croons, "Don't make me wait / You got me wet, come over / You know I got that supersoaker." On the flipside, water also signifies the trials and challenges that accompanies relationships. In "Preservation" she assures, "I know that / I'm gonna stay 'til the ice goes / Gonna stay / I'm just gonna stay 'till the tough love." The entire album plays out like a fleeting, romantic waiting game.
With an air of yearnful sensuality, these tracks are more club and pop-oriented than those that defined IRISIRI and an older Eartheater LP, Metalepsis. This is heard on her collaboration with AceMo, the old-school, lo-fi rave sound of "Prodigal Self," which instantly recalls an afterhours night shrouded in haze and playful delight. In the penultimate track, "Fontanel," aquatic winds carry Drewchin's falsetto coos. The track's syrupy lyrics feel as though they're grasping onto the last bits of a collapsing fantasy. The raw spontaneity of past records is traded for saccharine songs, resulting in a danceable, crisply packaged project.
But this languidness is also where the album occasionally falls flat—some of the tracks wade almost too neatly into others. But having several producers to hand here helps her overcome this hurdle. Take how AceMo's extraterrestrial club touch dips into Tony Seltzer's trap sounds on "Spill The Milk," and, later, the way in which Color Plus's video game beats take off on "Preservation." As she transitions into this new club sound, Drewchin maintains her exceptional ability to transfix listeners with lulling vocals and poetic references. Though backed by club instrumentals, the stories Eartheater unfurls in these love songs are far from shallow, and the desperate sorrow underlying them might even foreshadow an ill fate. Rushing with mysticism and romance, Trinity's club tracks draw from the gentlest sounds of old-school rave and pop.
Tracklist01. Prodigal Self
02. High Tide
03. Supersoaker
04. Spill The Milk
05. Lick My Tears
06. Pearl Diver
07. Preservation
08. Runoff
09. Fontanel
10. Solid Liquid Gas