Review Summary: Don't think too hard
The first nasally whine which this album unabashedly thrusts into your face filled me with an unmistakable mantle of dread. Sounding like a hyper-entitled girl on My Super Sweet Sixteen, Colleen unflinchingly announces that:
I Want..... I Wanna Grow Uh-up
oh yea
I Want to grow up I really do
This is what the dad who bought the wrong color Lexus convertible must feel like. This feeling of being the dad of some whinging princess never really goes away throughout the whole song (or album for that matter), but despite this, I felt a struggle brewing up inside me. While the song possesses the one of the most cloying choruses I've heard lately, I found some endearing elements, potential intrigue and depth. Putting aside the thought that it might be some kind of musical Stockholm Syndrome; her introspective look at the pains of growing up, the listless resistance against the adult world conflicting with the desire to adopt a more conventional and responsible life is something many twenty/thirty year old type B people could relate to. Much of what she's saying are self-defeating, obvious, annoying claims and observations that just makes you want to shake her and tell her to shut up and get a job. But I imagine many of us have felt the same annoying things, felt the urge to shape up without the impetus to do so. It encapsulates the difficulties of wanting to become a genuine adult: it feels as though you're trying to change some fibers integral to who you are and creates a confused and conflicted self. I thought maybe that this is the point of the song; the truth reflected back at us. That all of our earnest internal calls to action and yearning for reform, without action, sound like an angsty tween to the outsider.
And then what follows are two tracks which can be charitably described as poison relief and less charitably described as a roadkill medley burrito. Every track is uniquely terrible, but all contribute to the sense that you're listening to some kind of high school diary musical montage. "Wild One" is merely rote skin to bone, but is a veritable reprieve from the next track: "TV". The instrumentals are painfully generic but the lyricism are nothing short of ludicrous. "TV is my friend" she frankly states. "Keeps me company when nobody else is around and I'm all by myself". What the f am I listening to. The song is absolutely littered with ridiculous lines about this girl and her T.V. I thought to myself: This album has to be taking the piss out of itself. I mean we all love T.V. but really there's nobody that would seriously make an entire song about their relationship to their T.V. Right? So I pored over the songs, hoping that the satirical punch line was in there somewhere, waiting for an attentive listener to figure out the big secret. "Pay Attention", that's gotta be where it is, the big reveal. But it wasn't, just a track about how boring people are and how it's hard to concentrate on them. It's a cute little track, but pretty vapid; certainly not the Rosetta Stone I was after. The next track, "Deeper Than Love", is an achingly ponderous tune which offered nothing more than trite musings on love's uncertainty and boredom.
Then we have "I Need to Stop Doing Things That are Bad For Me (Part 1)". It's an upbeat tune and initially I felt that maybe this was it. As you may have deduced, it's about how she needs to stop doing things which are bad for her. So applying this to the past 4 tracks, it made sense. The T.V, the complaining about everything, the horrible relationship stuff, this is the bad stuff she's referring to. All the absurdity is in the name of over dramatizing her life's problems. I pored over the track and the more I listened, the more I doubted this was the case. While it's maybe true to some extent, not everything adds up. Everything sounds just too genuine to be tongue in cheek. All the sentiment, the bouncy tempo, the attempts at atmosphere and uncomplicated lyrics, it's all consistent with a stonefaced musical journal of common growing pains. I was slowly submerged by the heavy sensation that I've massively overestimated the self-awareness of this album. The caricatures of the sentiments reflecting the banal nature of these impulses - the joke - turns out the joke was on me.
What followed merely confirmed my diagnosis. "I Need to Stop Doing Things That are Bad For Me (Part 2)" relates the "edgy" side of her which feels the need to constantly get messed up. The sentiment is relatable to some, me included, but god is it presented in the most unlikable way imaginable. The garbled production, the droning guitar, the verses; while I have no doubt the feelings are genuine, it tries so hard to raise the stakes high for an impulse to get high/drunk. However, in context, all it does is create an unneeded and comically dramatic mood. "Grind My Teeth" is another funny one, the overblown sense of grittiness it tries to achieve combined with the image of someone continually grinding her teeth just makes me laugh. And the finale, "Whatever I Want", is a skeletal self-affirming fart which serves as an abrupt ending to this tepid Bildungsroman, which touts some kind of resolution, but lacks any substance to support this or provide a worthwhile journey.
I really did hold out hope for the entirety of this album. I wanted to like it. I waited ever so patiently for a singular clue that she knew that all of this was a colossal farce on the petty emotions of whinging self-loathing twenty-somethings. I searched every crevice and nook; I listened attentively through every exhausting verse and every insipid riff, just waiting for a stroke of brilliance to cast it's glory on my lowly peasant face. But for all my devotion, I've sadly concluded this album has little to offer to anyone of substance. Even if it was all just satire and she just refuses to break character or even if I missed the breakthrough moment (both unlikely), it would not change the fact that it sounds pretty terrible. Ironically, it does absolutely nothing to distinguish or challenge itself and does and says nothing you haven't heard a million permutations of. The instrumentation is never beyond passable and is often times dreadful. The vocal delivery is usually whining like a toddler, prone to complain about any insignificant problem. The production is confused and the tone is baffling. And the lyricism includes some of the most absurd verses, and hauntingly awful choruses you'll find. Don't let my sacrifice be in vain and take my word on this one.
