Review Summary: “When I think about it, I don’t even know”
There’s a lot that’s immediately appealing about
With a Hammer, most apparent the sense of eclecticism, vibrancy and fun that makes up the outer layer of the album. The wonderful pop sensibilities of the whole thing, cool and fluid enough to never really fully commit to any one style, but rather playing around within a splash pool of a very specific aesthetic that can just as freely tap hardcore breaks as bouncy k-pop, trip-hop and glitch as long as it’s all working within a mood of playful, languid detachment make for an easy romp through Yaeji’s creative experience. Whatever stylistic jumps the album may take from song to song, it’s that slick pop sensibility that keeps the whole thing together, a sensibility that, in its smooth airiness, can occasionally touch on being bloodless. The delightful verses in Korean are an excellent element that only adds to the eclectic, cosmopolitan flair of the whole thing. Her lyrics, similarly, touch ever-so-obliquely on the themes inspiring the album, rather eschewing whatever emotional tumult that was inspiring the record in favor of her effortless grasp of texture and vibe.
No matter the inspirational source of
With a Hammer, repeated self-affirmation is the theme running throughout the album. Yaeji’s taking the excellent dance-music tradition of distilling her vocal presence into brief, repetitive slogans that effectively ride along with all the eclectic smoothness of her beat-work. Such simple lines as “Am I saying thank you/Am I enjoying it too/Am I taking it for granted?” on For Granted come across as reflective and measured, her call to “break the cycles/make it make you mend the cycles” a simple mobilization, while her excoriation of race fetishism on Fever is both a biting mockery and a plea to be seen as a human being first, delivered in a few acid lines. The themes that are being made so much of in the press are undoubtedly there, but Yaeji’s hardly willing to sacrifice her devotion to the sheer aesthetic of her approach. Yaeji’s primary mission here is to make dance music, and its one that she’s very good at carrying out.
If Yaeji’s not really interested in breaking new ground or doing more to push her stylistic collage into anything resembling risky or even bold territory,
With a Hammer at the very least lays out the groundwork for her to do so. That the album is almost uniformly breezy and lightweight, in spite of the playful stylistic jumps peppering it throughout, hardly counts as a knock against it in the face of how well she melds everything into one neat little package. And while the open pop leanings of the album most likely don’t have enough bite or hook to translate into anything resembling crossover appeal, her inspirations and expressions are handled deftly enough that her unique aesthetic bent remains the centering core of the whole thing. That there’s a sense of artistry to Yaeji’s music that both incorporates and pushes beyond her Korean-American identity is pretty obvious. That there’s not a whole lot of depth beyond that fact doesn’t really hurt anything given what a playful little slice of creativity it all is. But however fleeting the impression that this may leave, it’s an excellent little excursion that deserves at least a few revisits.
