Physics Universal Love Language, the second album by Syrian-Armenian-American singer Káryyn, is tuned to 432hz, a standard that is, according to new age adherents, more in line with the hum of the universe. Promotional materials place her music “at the intersection of sound, spirit, and physics,” which sets the barrier for entry intimidatingly high. But it’s worth waving away the palo santo smoke because in clearer air, Physics Universal Love Language is an album of immediate pleasures, lavished with sharp hooks and melodramatic flourishes readily accessible in this dimension.
The positioning makes a little more sense in the context of Káryyn’s previous work. Her debut album, 2019’s mournful The Quanta Series, was more forcefully experimental. It felt like a journey into a long-abandoned mausoleum, her voice reverberating off the walls, microtones colliding, an Armenian folk standard blending into her own compositions like a breath dissolving into air. Often it wasn’t clear whether Káryyn was singing in English or Armenian.
Physics Universal Love Language emerges from the crypt almost immediately. Káryyn’s voice is clear and cut-sharp at the front of the mix on the record’s first chorus: “Like a long-ass sustain/Like a long-ass decay/You put a pause on our lovin’.” These are not lyrics bogged down by convoluted thought. A dense beat punches into “ELSEWHEN,” and the yearning in her voice in the chorus is unequivocal: “One day you might wake up/You might be thinking of/Me.” The melodramatic melodies and quiet-loud dynamics of the early piano ballad “FURTHER WE FALL” wouldn’t be out of place in a billion-dollar Hollywood animation.
Káryyn produced the album alongside James Ford, a member of Simian Mobile Disco and one of the most sought-after producers in London’s mainstream indie milieu, and there are co-production credits from a handful of others, including Hudson Mohawke. These are pop producers; their perspectives diverge from those of the late deep listening pioneer Pauline Oliveiros, under whom Káryyn studied as a teenager. That’s another signal of a fairly radical shift in Káryyn’s approach to her work in the seven-year gap between albums. On two sensuous, R&B-leaning songs in the middle of the record, Káryyn’s newfound directness is reflected in her lyrics. On “END TO KNOWING YOU,” she sings that an encounter “feels so fucking primal”; on “the 6TH,” she feels a moment “in the physical, the spiritual, the mental, the emotional.” It would have been unthinkable around the release of The Quanta Series to imagine the same artist singing anything so straightforward.
Her idiosyncrasies remain, though, and PULL is at its most compelling when her experimental tendencies mesh with a four-to-the-floor beat or a theatrical chorus. The six-minute quasi-title track works as a centerpiece, its compressed qanun (a stringed Middle Eastern instrument, played here by the acclaimed Syrian musician Maya Youssef) looping in the background as electronic pulses, foreboding pianos, and disembodied voices swirl around the mix. It’s often impossible to tell where Káryyn’s natural voice ends and the electronic mutations she creates with her Kaoss Pad take over, but she resists the urge to indulge in that effect. Instead she uses it to alter the dynamics of a track, a dizzying distraction before another kick drum punches through. PULL may not align more closely with the universe’s heartbeat than any other left-field avant-pop album, but earthly pleasures like those are powerful on their own terms.
