2023-09-08 20:36:58
He wasn’t even of age when his first single, ‘Drivers license’ (2021), put her in the spotlight: number one in half the Western world, supporting the early Grammy of ‘Sour’, her debut album. Olivia Rodrigo has confessed that, between 18 and 20, he grew the equivalent of ten years, and of his tribulations, fiascos of the heart and brushes with fame This second album is coming out now, ‘Guts’which as its title suggests (‘guts’), shows her raising her tone, showing her nails and, also, surrounding herself with those musical instruments that lately seemed eccentric, electric guitars.
The first smack is given by the opening theme, ‘All-American bitch’, where she plays with self-parody, presenting herself as “the perfect American bitch / with perfect American lips / and perfect American hips”, alternating the intimate sequence with the rock shake of a chorus in which the echo of Avril Lavigne’s ‘hits’ resonates. Guitars and more guitars in other numbers with disheveled ‘punch’, like ‘Bad idea right?’, a song with playful rapper grafts about the inconvenience of getting involved with an ex, and ‘Ballad of a homeschooled girl’, container of social discomforts, effect ‘FOMO’ included. And what can we say about ‘Get him back!’, a very enjoyable cross between the first Beck and The Runaways, bearer of a delicious text: “I want to meet your mother and tell her that her son stinks.”
In the rehearsal room
This last song starts with a “one, two, three…” and the click of the drumsticks, conveying the feeling that it has been recorded in the same rehearsal room with the musicians of a band playing together. General liveliness sought by the repeat producer (and co-author of all songs) And Negroesa powerhouse with credits on albums by Kylie Minogue, Carly Rae Jepsen and Caroline Polachek.
Resentment, confusion and bad mood, and relationships short-circuited by celebrity, and musings on the nature of success. There, the most conclusive sample is ‘Making the bed’: “I got what I wanted, but it’s not what I imagined.” The rich girl who cries? Rather, she scratches, here in a roller coaster ballad in which she says she dreams every night that she is driving in a car without brakes and that she feels that they love her as if she were “a tourist attraction.”
Yes, expiatory ‘baladism’ configures the other side of the coin, and we must mention ‘Vampire’, with its ‘crescendo’ on the piano and its views of a rarefied relationship, the magical arpeggios of ‘Lacy’ or the romantic torments that float around ‘Logical’ and ‘The grudge’. Material that completes a circle of songs with almost immediate access, witty, with a sense of humor and emotional content, which may well establish this Californian of Filipino ancestors, born in the year of grace 2003, in the first commercial division. Jordi Bianciotto
Other albums of the week
‘Sea of mirrors’
The Coral
Run On
Folk pop
★★★★
Conceived as the soundtrack for a non-existent film (a spaghetti western of surreal horror!), the Wirral group’s new album offers 13 songs from serene beauty and a ghostly point in which echoes of Morricone, Lee Hazelwood and the Laurel Canyon scene sound surrounded by sumptuous string arrangements courtesy of Sean O’Hagan. The turbulent ‘Oceans Apart’ Includes a cameo by Cillian ‘Oppenheimer’ Murphy. Rafael Tapounet
‘For that beautiful morning’
The Chemical Brothers
EMI-Universal
Electronics
★★★★
The gurus of ‘big beat’, a spectacular electronic branch coined in the 90s, are in good shape in this return to the coven in the post-pandemic era. Session to reaffirm her label from the overwhelming opening of ‘Live again’ (with the voice of the French Halo Maud), riding on the funk of ‘The Weight’ and losing the world from sight, hand in hand with Beck, in ‘Skipping like a stone’, between sleepwalking tracks and suffocating psychedelic drifts. The ‘rave’ does not decline. J. B.
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