If you ever thought that pop music was getting too anhedonic, too bummed out or laid-back—basically, too chill—then Sir Babygirl’s “Haunted House” is a one-song counterbalance. It is chill like an active volcano is chill. “Haunted House” is relentless from the first synths, like the pizzicato strings from “Call Me Maybe” repurposed to sound like a heart palpitation, and never lets up the 4/4 jackhammering. Kelsie Hogue’s vocals are frantic and almost breathless, as if between each line she’d stopped to sprint at full speed. Melody chases melody, jerking into a scream and then springing down an octave, like some kind of “Looney Tunes” ACME Slinky.
It’s exceedingly high-energy and also high-stress, much like the party described in the song. And while every pop artist with the slightest drop of alternative, from Charli XCX to Alessia Cara to Lorde, records at least one track about hating shitty parties—knowing thy audience—rarely do they actually sound malevolent. This is, needless to say, not for everybody. It’s only February, but Sir Babygirl’s debut, Crush on Me, is near-certain to be among the year’s top ten most extra pop albums. And everything about it, from the name Sir Babygirl (“the absolute bullshit name,” Hogue told Paper) to the emotional tenor generally being somewhere around an all-caps AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, requires for you to be OK with that level of excess.
Before Sir Babygirl, Hogue used to sing in a hardcore band, and her current project sounds like her attempt to translate that energy into neon and spangles, or at least into 1999. Like seemingly all of her generation, Hogue was inspired by the “TRL” era she grew up on, where “everything—hip-hop, pop, everything—was really maximalist and cartoonish,” she said. But the “TRL” era was at heart controlled, from Max Martin’s template-rigid Cheiron Studios productions to Christina’s mechanical melisma and R&B ballads. The dances were highly choreographed, the hooks precisely scheduled, the weird Titanic skits tightly scripted. Even the screaming tweenage crowds outside were cordoned into place. You have to go pretty far into “TRL” deep cuts before you find anything as authentically teenage as “Flirting With Her,” a mash note disintegrating into a freakout over a tossed-off “hey.” Even in the deep cuts you’d have a hard time finding love songs not geared toward the straight male gaze—Hogue is non-binary and bisexual, and much of Crush on Me is unambiguously about crushing on women. And you almost definitely wouldn’t find something like the mid-song shriek on “Heels” (“I changed my hair!”). It’s less the Britney of Circus than a full-on psychedelic circus—and in that same interview, Hogue calls herself a clown eight times.
For a short set—nine tracks, two of which are reprises and one of which is a 1:43 outro—it’s remarkable how Crush on Me comes off as two albums in one. One album, containing “Heels” and “Haunted House,” is a less abrasive version of SOPHIE’s work with Mozart’s Sister, which ends up as a hyperventilating version of the alt-pop singles that litter playlists everywhere. They’re all executed well; they’re certainly done with the most gusto possible. But the familiarity gets a bit much. “Cheerleader” attends to its detail, with an actual cheer chant in the background, but “I’ll kill my reputation if you come with me to hell” is basically a lyric from Lorde’s “The Louvre,” influence turning to copy. The campfire-singalong nihilism of “Everyone Is a Bad Friend” (“Everyone I meet, I think is going to die”) is SoundCloud emo in a neon bodysuit. Then there’s the unfortunate timing of the title track, dropped just as “thank u, next” made crushing on yourself go meme supernova. At least the song, if not a smash, still oozes charm with its early-Madonna synth twinkles and Hogue’s near-delirious delivery.
The other, better album in Crush on Me is an alt-rock throwback of the kind Honeyblood or Charly Bliss have been making, the 1990s touchstones in this case being the Sundays, Tuscadero on The Pink Album, and especially Dressy Bessy on the But I’m a Cheerleader soundtrack. This is of course still derivative, but it’s where Hogue allows herself to stretch. The reprises to “Flirting With Her” and “Haunted House” offer welcome breaks from the glitter treadmill. The formers bolsters its acoustic guitar break with a stalking orchestral background, the latter lets the pent-up energy of “Haunted House” dissolve into a featherlight rondo, and both are buoyed by Hogue’s voice at its most Harriet Wheeler ethereal. These, too, were inspired by Lorde, but the inspiration is a starting point, not an end. And if this were actually 1999, “Pink Lite” would make Hogue an instant star, as it voltrons “Here’s Where the Story Ends” and “Semi-Charmed Life” into the kind of monster track that would have engulfed alt-rock radio whole. “I’ll have months where I’ll just take everything in,” she told Paper; what’s truly remarkable is how much of that’s pushed back out, fully formed and infinitely shiny.
