SOPHIE - OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES (2018)

Bubblegum Bass / Deconstructed Club / Art Pop / Ambient / Hyperpop

RIYL: A. G. Cook, felicita, Autechre

 ✪ VINYL FANTASY 

★★★★★

Ever since it was first announced, I've spent probably way too much time trying to dissect the meaning of the title OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES, hoping to unpack what has to be more than just a thinly-veiled reference to vaginal fluid. It's no secret that the album it summarizes is a powerful assertion of femininity - SOPHIE made that abundantly clear when dropping the music video for opener and first single "It's Okay To Cry" to coincide with her coming out as transgender - and the fabulous cover shot of her glistening mermaid's pose (which was withheld until the moment of the digital version's release) goes right along with that stunning ownership of identity. But peel back the layers obscuring the titular pearl and delve beneath the shimmering surface of the murky waters to discover that all is not exactly as ordered as it seems: "nothingness" is imprinted on a plastic glove; one bare leg is juxtaposed against darkly radiant scales covering the other; the vacant stare atop her angular posture gazes off in some other direction. Each of these, in addition to the slickly metallic connotations of the title's word choice, is a frightening glimpse into a realm infinitely more nuanced, convoluted, and loaded with ineffable subtext than what you might expect from a producer who's re-imagined herself as a pop goddess.

Quite a few SOPHIE fans who have followed her live performances religiously since the release of her industry-shattering singles collection, 2015's PRODUCT, were disappointed by this, her debut album, due to its almost complete abandonment of the pop-forward direction of her earlier singles. Taking a more multi-faceted approach to world-building with experiments in drone, dark ambient, and hardcore bass in addition to continuing to redefine top 40 pop for underground clubs, OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES is a much more ambitious statement than PRODUCT's sequence of similarly BPM'ed hits, and apparently this progressively creative flair rubbed some listeners the wrong way. Most often cited negatively are the album's bizarre sense of momentum (or lack thereof in its more elegiac midsection), its reckless abandon of pop sensibilities (except in song-of-the-year front-runner "Immaterial" which successfully inverts Madonna's timeless classic into an out-of-body experience), and the wordless, anxious moods of "Pretending" taking up an inordinate percentage of the 39-minute run-time. Those who appreciate the audacity of SOPHIE's vision, however, would argue that the album succeeds not just despite those misgivings, but because of them.

It's easy to forget the sheer power embodied by the first three tracks (which include the aforementioned "It's Okay to Cry" and its brutal successors "Ponyboy" and "Faceshopping") since the extended rollout shared them one at a time over several months, but the ferocity of those singles alone would be enough to pull in a fresh listener even without the maze-like complexity of the labyrinth that follows. Everything after is immediately off-putting only because of its unfamiliarity, as further listens reveal massive intrigue in the icy synths of Kate Bush-inspired ballad "Is It Cold in the Water?" and in the layering of haunted voices on "Infatuation". SOPHIE's painstaking compositions have struck the perfect balance between divine elegance and sinister anguish, constructing an arc that toes the line between those extremes without ever falling into the abyss below, or at least not until the rumbling chaos of "Pretend World" devours the apocalyptic machinations of "Whole New World" in the nine-minute epic that closes the set. Built of paradoxes and inversions like an M.C. Escher painting carved into the face of a pop diva, OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES is every bit as confounding as its obfuscated title, and its unending threads of obsessive fascination make for an intensely rewarding listening experience for those who can stomach its calamitous oil.