After three albums about unstable, intense relationships, Empress Of’s Lorely Rodriguez closed her 2020 record I’m Your Empress Of with some distressed revelations: “I get off on being awful to myself/I need some help, I need help/I need myself.” Upon that record’s release, Rodriguez took a pandemic-induced break from her own music, composing for the Amazon show The Wilds and contributing a song to an Ad Council campaign bringing music to struggling middle schoolers. A year and a half later, she’s reunited with producer BJ Burton for the new Save Me EP, a transitional moment for an artist who’s continually shifted between straightforward pop and more experimental music. Released on her own label Major Arcana, Save Me represents an opportunity to consolidate her sound while exploring less intense territory.
Several songs here are outright disco-inspired, a new sound for Empress Of. At first, the title track’s wistful intro sounds like it could slot unnoticed onto a Banks record, but when the beat properly kicks in, there’s a more interesting desperation simmering underneath. The sensuality never reaches a full boil, save for a moment when Rodriguez breathlessly exclaims, “If you need me, baby, take me/In the back of the room for the night.” She doesn’t go into more detail than that, but the maniacal string stabs and a garbled call-and-response vocal convey the emotion when the clipped mix falls short. “Turn the Table,” produced by Jim-E Stack, is a straightforward foray into house, with dramatic dynamic shifts serving a narrative about an imbalanced relationship: “I feel my body/On a pedestal/I want to tell you/But now I don’t know why.”
The frustration comes when, even as an EP, Save Me becomes repetitive. It’s one thing to write songs about desire and another to lean on nearly identical choruses in “I want you to save me” and “I want you to keep me up.” Almost every song climaxes with a section alternating between a synth riff and a title drop—each effective on their own, but noticeable when clumped together. When Rodriguez breaks from that formula, it’s rewarding: The 909s-heavy “Dance for You,” a post-breakup recovery song with the urgency of her weirder material, is the EP’s most accomplished composition. Closer “Cry for Help” returns to the lyrical explorations of fear and insecurity that closed I’m Your Empress Of: “You don’t have to see tears to hear a cry for help/You don’t have to be near to know I’m not myself.” Yet it’s one of Rodriguez’s most aggressive songs in years, the woozy melody sliding in and out of sync with the thudding beat. There’s more than one form of confidence.
