On Cherry Glazerr’s first new album in four years, I Don’t Want You Anymore, Clementine Creevy pushes herself to extremes. As a lyricist, she explores devotion and surrender, apathy and dependency. As a musician, and self-producing alongside Yves Rothman, she swerves from radio-friendly electro-pop to fuzzed-out garage rock, her vocals delivered in conspiratorial speak-sing or guttural howls. If it scans as an artist throwing everything at the wall, the triumph is that Creevy sounds like she’s in the process of sorting through it.
Cherry Glazerr’s previous albums, 2014’s Haxel Princess and 2017’s Apocalipstick, were rooted in garage rock and noise-pop, but 2019’s Stuffed & Ready went off like a cynical, adrenalized bomb. In place of those explosive moments, I Don’t Want You Anymore paws at ambiguity. The feelings are raw, and Creevy resists major-chord resolutions. Alongside sparse basslines played by Rothman and Sami Perez, Creevy captures the emotional murkiness of a series of devastating but life-affirming relationships through her chilled minor-key guitar and a playful snarl that recalls PJ Harvey. She has cited Evanescence as an influence—a clear reference point for the album’s moments of unbridled drama. But this isn’t a mall-goth reinvention; in sound and subject matter, Cherry Glazerr resists being pinned to any one aesthetic or sound.
Two songs early in the album show just how much Creevy is willing to expand. “Touched You With My Chaos” is a melancholy anthem with harsh, overdriven guitars, shrieking trumpet, and a maudlin string section in the final minute. Creevy wrote it after watching Gregg Araki’s harrowing 2004 film Mysterious Skin, seeking to mimic its themes of desperation, which she does in a screamy, bratty chorus: “I said that I loved you,” she howls. “I never wanted love.” In the relentless “Soft Like a Flower,” Creevy bares it all over garage rock deep-fried in emo. The song ends in a maniacal laugh that could easily be mistaken for a cry: an actorly gesture that suggests Creevy is fiercely devoted to her role.
The maniacal laugh-cry is also a sign Creevy’s having fun again. It recalls the offbeat ridiculousness of early Cherry Glazerr gems like “Grilled Cheese,” a surprisingly sultry ode to comfort food. I Don’t Want You Anymore falls flat when Creevy opts for bubbly, optimistic indie pop like “Wild Times,” which doesn’t display the distinct artistic personality she has developed over the past decade. But the rest of the album’s back half soars, particularly “Sugar,” a slow-build rocker in which Creevy’s vocals take on an ominous lullaby lilt: “You make me wanna push my luck/Break my heart/I don’t care,” she sings. By the end, Creevy once again erupts in delirious laughter, but this time, there’s no mistaking it for tears—the only logical response is to start laughing along with her.
