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I’M DOING IT AGAIN BABY! begins in a greater place than lady in purple’s 2021 debut, if i may make it go quiet. Gone are Marie Ulven’s intrusive ideas about bodily hurting her family members and herself, the spiraling anxieties that appeared to plague her each second. Of their place, she’s found a newfound self-confidence and a few much-needed stability. Possibly, as she suggests on the opening track “I’m Again,” taking a while away from the music business helped. However psychological sickness is a lifelong battle, and whereas she’s wanting to say, “I like being alive,” she’s cautious to caveat it: “At the least for now.” On her second album, Ulven approaches acquainted subjects—unrequited love, self-doubt, the pains of rising up—with a stronger sense of self, sounding each softer and extra fierce than earlier than. As a queer pop star with a agency grasp on her personal emotional failings, lady in purple addresses frequent points from a novel perspective. However too typically, her lyrical ambitions fall wanting their lofty objectives.
Ulven’s power as a lyricist can be her weak point: The 25-year-old artist writes about romance and heartbreak as if she’s the primary individual ever to expertise them. On “A Night time to Bear in mind,” her giddiness is infectious, the propulsive dance-pop and palpable pleasure (“The whisper in my ear/Saying let’s get outta right here/Yeah, I’ve by no means been so mild on my toes”) serving to to easy over a few of the track’s clunkier strains (“Cocaine and weirdos” is a membership descriptor finest saved for the subsequent day’s recap textual content). “Too A lot” vividly channels the fury of a relationship breakdown: “Home all the time wins, so I’m taking all my love again/With you I lose both approach.”
Ulven writes about her personal experiences with a outstanding diploma of honesty and readability, however extra profound revelations are simply out of attain. At its finest, her naivete is evocatively uncooked. “Phantom Ache” recasts a trite flip of phrase into a real second of self-reflection: “I actually didn’t discover the center on my sleeve/I believe I bought invested in you and me.” However it’s onerous to not want for extra perception—breakup sentiments like “I want I by no means met you within the first place” really feel inanely frequent. The slick manufacturing throughout I’M DOING IT AGAIN BABY!—helmed by Ulven and fellow Norwegian Matias Tellez—can be higher served with extra nuance. Their heat synths and her textured growls name for deeper emotions. In distinction to its lyrical shortcomings, her second album is sonically richer, balancing the fragile piano on “I’m Again” in opposition to heavier basslines on “Ugly Facet.” Ulven’s voice additionally extends additional than earlier than, cracking right into a roar on “Phantom Ache” and retreating into mellower territory on “Decide Me.”
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