WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA: Sordid music for sordid times.
8.5
Credit: Records/Columbia
Blood, sequins, denim and grit; Slayyyter’s third LP is a rollicking, macabre Mid-West fantasy.
You’d hardly believe that Slayyyter’s sets at this year’s Coachella were played at 3pm. The crowd were positively ecstatic as she blew the foundations out of the Mojave stage, her frenetic energy showing up just about everyone else on both weekends. Keep in mind this was an American audience too; just imagine what it’s gonna be like when she tours the UK later this year (see you there, by the way).
If industry wonks need convincing that what we want for our sordid times is sordid pop music, look no further. Sure, the mid-2020s pop wave is gifting us gems at every level. But there’s no denying that its real peaks are being made at the dirtier, queerer end. Enter Slayyyter, tired of perpetually being seen as an up-and-comer of gay pop music and thus staking it all on making things personal.
The inspiration for her third LP: a Catholic – but not conservative – upbringing in St Louis, and the music that soundtracked her teenhood. She draws on the same electro-clash and noughties club roots of a certain bright green album, but if Brat lives in a world of dark, sweaty rooms lit by the flashes of compact cameras, WOR$T GIRL envisions raves in caravan parks and dancing scantily clad in dodgy bars. Make sure to check out the visual album, by the way. The whole thing is on YouTube; a rollicking, macabre Mid-West fantasy, where violence lingers around every corner, with blood, sequins, denim and grit filling every image. The whole production is a tremendous success.
“…a rollicking, macabre Mid-West fantasy, where violence lingers around every corner, with blood, sequins, denim and grit filling every image.”
On paper, the record is playing with the well-worn ‘broke with expensive taste’ vibe of many of its contemporaries. But it’s the American angle that really bites. A nonpartisan scalp into a far truer, far more homegrown version of the country that lives behind the billionaire hellscape on its surface. Less than marching against oppression or authoritarianism, she expresses the turn-ons of those brought up in the land of milk and honey who will never be allowed to rule it.
Because Slayyyter grew up in that world, everything she touches has authenticity. Even when you might argue that the record does more to imbue dirtiness than to actually live it, her charisma and intention more than make up for it. I find that being genuinely sordid is never the purpose with music like this anyway, when the real desire is for material that acknowledges societal truths whilst indulging our fantasies.
“…she expresses the turn-ons of those brought up in the land of milk and honey who will never be allowed to rule it.”
To that end, Slayyyter may well have just dropped the gay album of the year, shortly to be followed by the gay tour of the year. It’s hard to picture the 200 miles-per-hour ‘Beat Up Chanel$’ or Dubstep-tinged ‘Crank’ being topped by anything more exciting, nor the pop scene producing something more earnest and pained than ‘Brittany Murphy’. She’s not a revolutionary, but she doesn’t need to be when her ability to engage her listeners in their promiscuous daydreams is distinction-worthy.
WOR$T GIRL is Slayyyter’s most confident and complete work to date, uninhibited and realised. She fashions out a wicked balance of energies and imagery, weaving a personal tale where the scars of teenhood and a corrupt society leave marks to be adorned with daisy dukes and glitter. Conservatism so thoroughly rules our cultural zeitgeist right now that even showing a bit of skin feels like it causes a provocative moral panic. But it’s never about how Slayyyter dresses in her music; it’s about how sex, violence and saw-tooth synths are the only remedy.
Score: 8.5/10
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