Over the past few years, the San Antonio-based composer and sound collagist claire rousay has ascended through avant-garde music circles with a wide-ranging spectrum of work. There are somewhat trite text-to-speech ruminations on big concepts, fit to be enjoyed with microscopic hors d’oeuvres at gallery spaces. There are pleasant ambient albums filled with tactile clatter and long, silvery tones. rousay has also put out a number of collaborations with her best friend and fellow Texas experimentalist mari maurice (more eaze) that rove into more whimsical pop territory, incorporating arcade bleeps, slimy burbles, and fragile emo wailing. Together, they let loose; the pair have titled projects after Jimmy Eat World lyrics and songs after a TikTok series in which absolutely plastered young women do dumb shit like tumble off of mechanical bulls.
For their latest project, Never Stop Texting Me, rousay and maurice take a good-humored stab at hyperpop. Though they are primarily known as “drone superstars,” in the words of one critic, their change in palette isn’t ultimately that jarring; they have played with Auto-Tune before, like on their 2020 emo-pop album </3. While the new record primarily pulls from 2000s pop-punk, emo rap, and chiptune, it doesn’t completely discard the field recordings and atmospherics the two have been known for. There are warm, enveloping washes of synths on “arm” and the crinkle of what sound like wrappers on “camille.”
Opener “same” begins with trickling water and rumbling static, like what you’d hear if you were at a spa, until the transcendental headspace fades away. Then a frail, robotic warble: “Do you think of me every time we’re apart? Do you feel my name inside your heart?” the voice asks, and the digital plinks in the background recreate the trepidation of chatting with your crush on AIM. As is typical with hyperpop releases, it’s sometimes hard to discern what rousay and maurice are singing on Never Stop Texting Me because of the vocal treatment—rousay typically bleats like a Minion, and maurice adopts a feathery falsetto—but the songs tend to reflect frustrated attempts at connection. “iphone2” stages a funny and sweet dialogue between two people who live in separate castes of phone ownership. “Can’t even pay for my one phone,” one says, dreaming of the day that they make the big bucks. The other expresses insecurity about their shiny new device, because “you’re still rocking the iPhone 2/And all I want is to get close to you.”
One of the most amusing songs on the album is “art,” which is like a Lonely Island parody for ambient hotshots, full of self-deprecating swagger. “We’re on that Kali Malone shit,” rousay and maurice sing in unison, citing a beloved but relatively niche organist as a way of expressing triumph at their creative process. Heightening the levity is the track’s overly sentimental production, which is built on fingerpicked guitar and whistling flutes. Being a smaller artist is pretty unglamorous, but rousay and maurice flaunt their lifestyle like they’re Megan Thee Stallion big: “Cashing out PayPal because we just got paid/Ordering UberEats with cash from Bandcamp Day.”
In profile last year, rousay playfully self-identified as a “millennial sun, zoomer rising,” and Never Stop Texting Me does feel designed more for the former demographic than the latter—or at least for hyperpop newcomers, and not those already entrenched in its communities. (One bridge between generations is Bloodz Boi, a Drain Gang-loving, Rate Your Music-posting rapper from Beijing who broods about feeling isolated on “missed.”) The album’s production is stiff and blocky, due in large part to the militant percussion, and while the music’s rough-hewn quality is part of its appeal, the songs can lack a sense of audaciousness and velocity. Still, as a lighthearted entry within rousay and maurice’s ever-expanding discography, Never Stop Texting Me has an indisputable charm. And even if you aren’t quite convinced, there will be plenty more music to come.
