As a collection, ‘GOLDSTAR’ is the type of first impression that may well leave one slightly lost, a little confused, and with their head certainly spinning, but after it all anyone who meets them will be damn happy they did.
As the soundtrack to a night in a sweaty underground club, ‘Crystalpunk’ stands tall - all the more for its thematic emotional heft. A daring - if, at times, a little overdone - and ambitious statement.
A record that couldn’t be more consistently him. It paints this, his seventh studio album, as a compendium of his best parts, and perhaps his first to truly do so.
Tempering the unfettered experimentation of their last outing, 2022’s ‘Tableau’ (where tracks clocked in anywhere between 50 seconds and eight minutes), ‘Only You Left’ does indeed emerge as a more structured project, roughly bound by a central polarity of “wood versus metal”.
The project’s peaks tend to dominate the landscape, yet for something that sits somewhere between music’s most illustrious meet-up and a bona fide 2020s Hall of Fame, there truly is something here for everyone.
‘Memory Be a Blade’ captures an artist in transition: rather than offering neat conclusions, waterbaby sits with her discomfort, turning nostalgia from a place of safety into a site of reckoning.
