Review Summary: A step in a much more interesting direction.
Miami Garden Club is a very special album to me, and it's for a couple reasons. For starters, it was one of the few times I had given something a perfect score on the instant that I heard it, and I ended up sticking by it well to this day; It's quite possibly the single album that I've listened to more than any other. It is a condense 46 minutes of pure Electropop - all killer, no filler. It will most definitely go down as one of my favorites of the decade.
So, moving forward from that I was pretty worried about Rose Gold, I didn't think it would be the followup I was looking for, especially after not really liking what Kitty was doing with The Pom-Poms. But, I am proud to say I'm very pleased with what we ended up getting ultimately in the end. Rose Gold is a much more mature and personality driven outing than Miami Garden Club was, to my understanding it's actually written and produced entirely by Kitty herself with some occasional outside help from her husband, Sam Ray, who is credited on here three times all under different names funnily enough.
And I have to say, she really killed it on production several times here. While I wasn't initially blown away by "Counting All the Starfish" and "Disconnect", they've grown on me significantly from when I first heard them, the latter of which is probably my favorite song on the album, I really adore the lowkey instrumental and especially the hook on the song. "B.O.M.B. (Peter)", "Mami", "Sweat", and especially "Medicine" are all very good progressions from the sounds she was playing with on the last album. "Strange Magic" might singlehandedly contain the most personality of any song she's ever written, both within the odd instrumental and the prideful lyrics, and especially the way she raps midway into the track, I can't help but smile. The final two tracks, "The Window" and "Flordia" might straight up be the best thing Sam Ray's done since the two Teen Suicide albums from back in 2012. "The Window" in particular is adorable, I love it.
There are a couple songs that don't really land for me. I appreciate a lot of the sentiments behind "Look Demure" but I felt like the execution left a lot to be desired. The instrumental "Kitty's Farm" is my least favorite on the album, easily, I just don't think the instrumental was good enough to be put on the album let alone on it's own. But I mean on the whole, I'm impressed and I can't wait to see what she does moving forward. While I don't think it's quite as good as Miami Garden Club, I'm still really enjoying a lot of what's going on here.
