Following her 2023 dystopian concept record ‘Wallsocket’, hyperpop musician Underscores sought “brain off” music that wasn’t as “intentional” as the gloomy fictional town of her second album. But a packed schedule (supporting Porter Robinson and Danny Brown, playing Coachella, and appearing on NME‘s The Cover) didn’t afford much downtime. So lands April Harper Grey’s urgent self-produced third album ‘U’, music “for malls, airports, hotels, supermarkets” by a touring musician in constant transit. Though, it’s not clear if this frenetic, caffeine-infused boost to survive the modern capitalist overwhelm necessarily counts as brain off.
Aiming for something less intentional than concept has led to reality: hyperactive, diaristic, tabloid-ish, beyond-the-fourth-wall bangers detailing Grey’s onset E-girl stardom. Amid fans now requesting autographs on their passports, on ‘U’ – both a pseudo-self-titled record and an infatuation with you, her audience – Underscores raves under a paranoid ascension. “Is this doing anything for you, baby?” she performs on ‘Tell Me (U Want It)’, anxious about a bad popstar dye job. Chasing accolades, she’s having “wet dream[s] ‘bout the perfect song[s]” (‘Music’), and on ‘Hollywood Forever’ she’s revelling in fame’s riches: “Is it bad that I kinda love being a bitch?”
But ‘U’ is as much about intimacy (or a lack thereof) as it is celebrity, finding Grey, now a commercial product, in search of connection. Take dreamy standout ‘Lovefield’, where Grey reaches through the screen: “Can we have a heart-to-heart? […] I don’t wanna be untouchable anymore.” But on the noughties Britney-ish track ‘Do It’, with its Justin Timberlake breakdown, she makes herself unavailable and unattainable: “Don’t you get it? People get my lyrics tattooed on their bodies,” she spits, possessed, “I’m tryna run a business here.” Later, in earnest, she confesses on ‘Bodyfeeling’ that she’s just not prepared to give it all up: “You know what’s required of anyone in this business.”
In capturing celebrity transience and ensuing emotional seclusion, ‘U’ retains Underscores’ established documentarian approach to pop music: she’s both time capsule and mirror, a reflection of a globalised, overstimulated, reputation-conscious, isolated generation and its parasocial obsessions. ‘U’ is not as narratively juicy as ‘Wallsocket’ – an almost-mockumentary of Middle America brimming with Twin Peaks-level lore – but it retains Grey’s observational viewpoint, a dystopian-gaze with surreal liminality.
Underscores is most effective at this skill, at removing from her music any context cues that could point to a time or place of release. She jitters between decades of concentrated hyperpop, dubstep, EDM, Imogen Heap-inspired harmoniser-pop and combination guitar-electronica lab experiments, a tour-de-force of production chops that reaffirms Grey’s established position as a key auteur in the future of her genre. More Black Mirror than Twin Peaks, ‘U’ is an intimate hyperpop record portraying snowballing isolation, a digital-age pop star’s yearning under the limelight of the techno-infused Anthropocene.
