If tie-dye had a sound, it would sound just like Remi Wolf. The Los Angeles-based indie pop artist makes music that moves and feels like a psychedelic swirl of colors. Her bright, groovy instrumentals explode with personality and playfulness, backing impressionistic lyrics laced with witty, unexpected turns of phrase and impressive vocals that oscillate from howling to lilting. Wolf herself invokes the prismatic, vibe-heavy quality of her songwriting and production on “Cinderella,” the breezy jam that opens her sophomore record Big Ideas. “I can be yellow, I can rearrange by the afternoon / And I’m purple, so quick when I switch it up,” she sings over jubilant horns and Donna Summer-esque whistles like she’s leading a summer city parade. The song’s music video further spells out how Wolf sees her ever-changing range of emotions reflected through the color spectrum, with the tint of her outfit and leg warmers changing every few beats.
These sudden, mercurial shifts in mood characterize the rest of Big Ideas, which builds upon the high-energy bedroom pop of Wolf’s 2021 debut Juno by channeling ‘70s funk, ‘80s stadium rock, and ‘90s ska and giving each era a sunny, stoner-friendly Southern Californian spin. But although it’s much more polished and down-to-earth than Juno, Big Ideas is just as scattered, its title accurately describing Wolf’s interest in exploring every nook and cranny in her mental Rolodex and scooping out whatever shiny, attractive gem she finds. Such a maximalist approach is more feature than bug, of course, resulting in an album whose indulgent tendencies mostly supersede an overall lack of cohesion and focus. Think of listening to it like eating dessert on an empty stomach before dinner: It’ll satisfy any sweet-tooth cravings you may have, but it may leave your tummy rumbling for something a little more filling.
That Big Ideas registers as more style over substance could be a consequence of Wolf developing much of this record during breaks while touring and amid the dissolution of a relationship. Creating anything in an intense state of personal and professional transition is always a bit of a risk, especially when there’s such limited time and energy to process our experiences, let alone turn them into art. Still, Wolf and her co-producer Solomonphonic’s exploratory, intriguing artistic choices are compelling enough to offset some of the album’s unevenness, running a fun gamut of influences from Sugar Ray to Tame Impala to Kimya Dawson.
Remi Wolf’s powerful, versatile bellow in particular continues to be a consistent highlight in her work, widening and deepening the album’s spacious, detailed soundscapes. She can capture the yearning romance on the thumping, reverb-heavy “Soup,” the mini epic ballad “Wave” and the rousing crescendo on “Alone in Miami” with the simple use of her anthemic roar. She can also just as easily twist her voice into something light, sensual, and beckoning on songs like the cheeky bop “Toro,” the blissed-out “Cherries and Cream” and the loopy “Pitiful.” Most importantly, Wolf recognizes the value of not taking herself too seriously, as evidenced by the helium pitch-shifting on the goofily named bonus track “Slay Bitch.”
What’s less satisfactory are Wolf’s more downbeat contributions to Big Ideas. “Motorcycle” finds her touching on the difficult dichotomy of wanting to live a normal life and desiring a more carefree one, a pertinent theme that other pop artists have also been contemplating. Despite the gorgeous, bluesy guitar and self-harmonizing, though, “Motorcycle” strains to reach the poignance it’s aiming for. “When I Thought of You” strives to articulate the dizzying emotional chaos of having a crush, but its busy combo of Auto-Tune, muted piano and buzzy guitar riffs, and a whimsical whistle straight out of a Top 40, mid-2010s pop song, ultimately overwhelms more than moves. The stripped-down album closer “Just the Start” is striking for its disarming vulnerability and twee lo-fi sound, but its brevity and cutesy delivery renders it more of a rough sketch than a fully fleshed-out track.
It’s not that Wolf can’t mine genuine pathos out of her grand, dense sonic canvas—her excellent one-off “Prescription,” written for the Amazon series I’m a Virgo, ranks as one of Wolf’s greatest pieces—but these relatively slowed-down attempts at honesty and endearment don’t quite have the same staying power as her more upbeat offerings. Uneasy as this ebb and flow may seem, it makes sense if you see Big Ideas as Wolf reckoning with and trying to make sense of all the fast-moving changes she’s dealt with over the past couple of years. So naturally, the outcome might not be as smooth, especially for someone who’s still relatively early in their career.
Big Ideas may never quite meet the sum of its parts, but Remi Wolf’s formidable technical confidence, innovative spirit and singular ability to navigate pop music trends without the impulse to pander make her incredibly exciting to listen to. Despite missing an anchor to ground her unrestrained ambitions, the LP reaffirms her talent among the crowded crop of other indie pop artists who emerged in the early 2020s. One could see Wolf on a similar trajectory as Charli xcx, whose excellent BRAT from earlier this summer represented a brilliant culmination of her honing her craft down to a precise science, and Big Ideas is certainly a step in the right direction for Wolf in making something truly great.
Sam Rosenberg is a filmmaker and freelance entertainment writer from Los Angeles with bylines in The Daily Beast, Consequence, AltPress and Metacritic. You can find him on Twitter @samiamrosenberg.
