When it comes to volume, Sarah Tudzin likes to keep listeners on their toes. Kiss Yr Frenemies, her debut album as Illuminati Hotties, playfully leaps between a variety of decibel-dictated sonic moods from the indie-pop canon. Hushed acoustic reveries give way to knife-sharp stabs of guitar; contemplative, finger-picked tranquility crescendos to giant slabs of post-rock feedback and trumpet fanfare. “You only like me when I’m sad,” she sweetly sings during a quiet interlude on “Pressed 2 Death,” an otherwise boisterous rambler that’s dotted with kiss-offs and opens with a fart noise.
Tudzin—who is technically Illuminati Hotties’ sole permanent member, although she records with a full band—is a veteran studio rat, and it shows in the album’s dynamic sounds. In addition to working as a production and engineering assistant to big-time indie producer Chris Coady (Beach House, TV on the Radio), she’s logged studio time with acts ranging from Porches to Macklemore and worked on the sound design for the original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton. Her expertise gives her own tracks a funhouse-like quality, with an eruption of noise, six-stringed squeal, or purposely lo-fi effect around every corner. Even without knowing that additional vocals on the album are credited to “Everyone at Jesse’s Party,” you get the sense that she had fun making this record.
Tudzin describes the sound of Illuminati Hotties as “tenderpunk,” and that feels right. Every emotional abrasion and pang of longing on Kiss Yr Frenemies is conveyed with just the right mix of sadness and acerbity. On the single “(You’re Better) Than Ever,” she confesses, “All the baddest words I knew came pouring out/When I heard you feel better/Better than ever.” Along with stylistic forebears Los Campesinos!, Tudzin’s sound sometimes recalls indie-pop lifer Rose Melberg’s many projects, as well as 1990s Vancouver punks Cub—all acts that have regularly challenged the common notion that indie pop is all cloying sentiments and bookishly restrained instrumentation.
Kiss Yr Frenemies also shares with those artists a sharp sense of humor, as Tudzin strikes a balance between digging deep for emotional resonance and making comedic hay out of the quotidian details of life and love in 2018. Just before detailing all-night benders and battles with self-doubt against the stuttering drum machines and ambient drones of “Cuff,” she dives into the beery sorta-romance of “Shape of My Hands,” recounting how she blew the her savings at 7/11 and heard a potential paramour quote her lyrics back to her. Money is a frequent concern in Tudzin’s cash-strapped universe. On “Paying Off the Happiness," she admits, “I could probably use a fourth job,” over kicky drum beats that bring to mind Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey.”
As that lyric suggests, plenty of listeners are sure to find Kiss Yr Frenemies deeply relatable. Beyond her PayPal namechecks and asides about encrypted text messages, the many feelings—love, uncertainty, heartbreak, FOMO, contemplativeness, empathy—Tudzin juggles throughout the album come together to capture the emotional complexity of being a young adult in the current decade. Amid these timely observations, it’s the indie-pop songwriting conventions she lovingly and expertly invokes that make Illuminati Hotties’ confident debut feel timeless.
