On the 2014 single “Hey QT,” the artist known simply as QT used pop as a vehicle to travel deep into the uncanny valley. A collaboration with hyperpop pioneers A. G. Cook and SOPHIE, the bubblegum bass anthem took the form of a marketing campaign for a (mostly) fictional soft drink, fetishizing the sound of soullessness while crystalizing key PC Music elements: hyperphysical synths, chipmunk vocals, advertising as genre. After seven years of silence across a rapidly changing pop landscape, the mysterious face behind QT, Hayden Dunham, returns as Hyd. Co-written by a coterie of experimental pop icons like Cook and Caroline Polachek, their four-track debut EP lacks some of the radical thrill of QT’s lone single; the songs mix stellar electro pop with some curiously tame stylistic choices. But Hyd still constitutes an intriguing statement of self and renewal from a performer who, after disappearing for the better part of a decade, now strips away the artifice of their previous project.
Pearlescent opener “No Shadow”—a ballad inspired by a temporary loss of vision the artist experienced in 2017—explores identity in the binary opposition of light and dark, asking, “Am I finally home?” over stark bass synth. Dunham’s skill as a producer is readily apparent throughout the EP: On the excellent “Skin 2 Skin,” their kinetic, hair-rising whispers seem to directly penetrate your ear. They sleekly dole out an assonant waterslide of “Gemini”s and “thigh”s and “ride or die”s that could rival Charli XCX’s “Claws”; they gasp, leaving suggestive gaps in their bitten-off phrases, flirting through fragments like “feeling kind of ___ on the inside” and “sweating through the ____, take it outside.”
Elsewhere, the influence of current-day PC Music affiliates takes hold. Though Hyd skirts the extremes of hyperpop—QT’s characteristic chipmunk vocals are nowhere to be seen, and the texture of the music’s electro pop is mild by current-day standards—Brooklyn producer umru still brings a deep bubblegum bass sound to “The One,” building its framework on metallic, claustrophobic synths. As the song darkly changes textures, Dunham innocently observes, “Now you’re gonna smash it to the ground/Now you’re gonna have to smash it to the ground.” Half love song and half lament, the track divides its time between twinkly, yearning ballad and quietly violent breakdown.
Polachek’s influence is even more obvious, sometimes to the point of eclipsing Dunham’s own identity, which can border on indistinguishable within the polished art pop of “Skin 2 Skin” and “No Shadow.” Hyd often bears traces of an early-’10s Tumblr landscape that no longer feels quite so relevant; single “The Look on Your Face” is a strangely straightforward ’90s bedroom-pop pastiche built on a foundation of acoustic guitar and hushed, untreated vocals. Both the lyrics and delivery—“I know she’s with you/But in my mind/We’re still back at your place/Back at your place, yeah”—are stilted and awkward, calling to mind an Olivia Rodrigo demo.
The pop innovations that PC Music helped catalyze—bubblegum bass, deconstructed club, hyperpop—have evolved dramatically since the singular “Hey QT.” As Quinn Thomas, Dunham symbolized the scene’s conceptual hijinks; seven years later, their belated debut presents them as a living, breathing, feeling person. But their updated sound feels like a lateral move into merely competent pop, rather than anything genuinely new. Hyd offers a sideways look into 2021’s alt-pop landscape, if not its advance.
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