Album review: Grimes, Miss Anthropcene
Last year, Grimes told the WSJ magazine that she’s planning on “killing off” her persona sometime in the future: “I think I’ll kill ‘Grimes’ soon. It will be a public execution followed by — by something else. I shouldn’t say yet.” Maybe that will be years down the line. Or, perhaps the day she said those words, she was just burnt out from social media beefs and the sardonic coverage of her relationship with Elon Musk. Either way, it’s at least possible that Miss Anthropocene, the singer/producer’s long-delayed and final record with label 4AD, will be the last we hear of Claire Boucher’s alter ego, Grimes. After all, she’s got a lot on her plate. She’s going to be a mom soon, and she’s looking at pursuing projects outside of music (she told Beats 1’s Zane Lowe that she might start a “psychedelic tech company”). Considering the circumstances, and the music on Miss Anthropocene, it seems that for Grimes, change is in the air.
Not that this album is a complete transformation for the artist. She’s always made thematically rich records, and many of its sounds will be familiar to fans of her early material. Yet, on Miss Anthropocene, she takes her love for world-building to new heights: “It’s a concept album about the anthropomorphic Goddess of climate change: A psychedelic, space-dwelling demon/ beauty-Queen who relishes the end of the world,” she said last year in a now deleted instagram post. Originally supposed to be a double album — it’s now 10 tracks if you don’t count the bonus material — the record’s subject matter is inspired by a love of comic book villains like Thanos and the Joker. If Batman’s nemesis illuminates our chaotic obsession with violence, and in Thanos, our ability to fuck things up even with good intentions, Grimes’ hope with Miss Anthropocene was to create a character to shed some light on our feelings surrounding climate change.
Based solely on the album’s media reception — the Wall Street Journal’s headline reads, “She’s Building a World of Doom and Gloom” — you’d think Grimes made a black metal record. While musically, this project is a bit gloomier than past material, it’s still Grimes after all, so even when she’s addressing a somber topic, she’s going to have a good time about it. Still, unlike Art Angels, which bristled with punk and pop energy, Miss Anthropocene is a bit quieter, and dare I say mature. The trick of opener, “So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth,” is in its atmosphere and repetition; though Grimes is just singing the same words over and over again, the song’s building beat and textured melodies make the simple lyrics worth repeating. The album’s darkish pop material is most satisfying, especially “Violence,” featuring punchy snares, 4/4 kicks and Grimes in a robotic falsetto, like an homage to Robyn’s dance pop opus, Body Talk. When she sings, “You wanna make me bad/ and I like it like that” in the chorus, she may be talking about climate change or toxic masculinity, but either way, we’re listening.
Individually, there are a handful of good songs here, but unfortunately, the album suffers from pacing and sequencing issues, especially in its first half. Grimes collaboration with Taiwanese-rapper 潘PAN, “Darkseid,” is either adventurous or too-much depending on your tastes. Then, in a jarring turn, the album transitions to “Delete Forever,” an acoustic ballad about the opiate crisis. It’s not bad, despite sounding a bit like something you would buy cereal to in a grocery store; however, next to the album’s more spacey, electronic oriented tracks, it sounds very out of place.
Like most cinematic villains, their reasons for killing and causing mayhem are complicated. In Psycho, Norman Bates isn’t murdering ladies in the shower to jittery violins for no reason. In his mind, he just couldn’t deal with his mom’s death. “IDORU,” the album’s final track, begins brightly with birds chirping and upbeat digital horns. It’s upbeat and sublime, a stark contrast with the lyrics, which seem to suggest that Grimes’ Goddess of climate change had some complex feelings about destroying humanity: “I wanna play a beautiful game / Even though we're gonna lose / But I adore you.” Grimes ability to express confusing emotions over serene pop has always charmed me, and while Miss Anthropocene is far from perfect, it’s exciting at least as a hint to what she’ll transform into next.