There’s a scene in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., the recent film adaptation of Judy Blume’s 1970 novel for middle schoolers, where four girls try an exercise that’s rumored to help breasts grow faster. In the privacy of one girl’s frilly bedroom, they thrust their elbows back and forth aggressively, like doing the backstroke with chicken wings, while chanting, “We must, we must, we must increase our bust!” That slice of adolescent desperation is ludicrous and awkward, both to viewers and the girls themselves. While Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak are more than twice the age of those protagonists, the two musicians—known together as the duo @—revel in a similar mix of strange and endearing growing pains on the cheekily titled Are You There God? It’s Me, @, which contrasts the harmonious folk-pop of their debut album, Mind Palace Music, with an endless scrapbook of glitchy psychedelia. Across five new songs, that mixture produces a colorful spread that occasionally clashes.
During the lockdown phases of the pandemic, Rose and Filipczak made their music from a distance, and they continued that approach on Are You There God? It’s Me, @, passing drafts back and forth between Philadelphia and Baltimore. However, they did change their production methods in order to challenge their writing. Software instrumentation and processed vocals push the humanness of @’s warm, acoustic sound in a more robotic, but equally stirring, direction. Songs like “Processional” and “Webcrawler” turn the duo’s hypnotic voices into trance-like screensavers over proggy keys, mutating rhythms, and hyperpop production touches. Sometimes, though, their enthusiasm gets the better of them; beholding the searing classic-rock guitar solo and coordinated rah rahs of “Webcrawler” are a little like watching a preteen trying on ill-advised outfits.
Rose has always had a striking voice that’s pure and direct, both in @ and and her solo project Brittle Brian, and her soothing tones inject some welcome naturalism back into the fold. On the title track, she sings choral harmonies about struggling to touch a loved one who’s hiding, looping her vocals into fractured rounds. Filipczak begins weaving his own voice into the a cappella mix until, at the halfway mark, the audio abruptly stutters and the song snaps into a totally different shape. The band goes full twee—complete with flute, rock-steady drumming, and a thin, bouncy bassline—in a move that’s daring in its simplicity. Bookended with proggier songs, the title track feels doubly refreshing, making @’s knack for ’70s-indebted harmonies and warm hooks all the more obvious.
Although Are You There God? It’s Me, @ feels like the musical equivalent of an adolescent growth spurt, the duo still finds enlightenment in screeching synths and data scraping. @ perfect the awkward-to-confident transformation on “Soul Hole.” The song pulses with a quantized beat of spliced drums, looped choir, and droning electronica. Right when it begins to nag, the music bursts euphorically open. Where some people look to religion for answers, @ turn to a different all-seeing arbiter of truth: search engines. “I’m going to the soul hole and I’m never coming back,” sings Rose, staring the internet dead on. It’s a fitting closer for the EP in its brief, vibrant arc: @ may be in a state of unexpected change, but like any good coming-of-age story, the record has you rooting for them.
