By Robert Moran and Annabel Ross
Katy Perry, 143
Restoring Katy Perry’s career to the vertiginous heights of 2010’s Teenage Dream was always going to require something drastic, and in the pop star’s estimation, winding back the clock seemed like the surest path to former glories. On her seventh studio album, 143, Perry is reunited with Dr. Luke (Łukasz Gottwald), one of the biggest producers of her halcyon era. A nearly decade-long legal battle with pop star Kesha, who accused the producer of sexual assault, ended in a settlement last year, and Perry has gambled that Gottwald’s Midas touch would outweigh the blowback. This is the first and most fatal decision on a record perhaps best defined by its poor judgement.
If getting Gottwald on board seemed imprudent at best, having the alleged abuser co-produce the allegedly feminist anthem Women’s World was outright madness. Accompanied by an equally bonkers “satirical” music video, the lead single and album opener sets 143’s sonic tone – dated dance-pop that Perry herself has already far bettered.
Crystal Waters’ 1991 club hit Gypsy Woman has already been sampled to oblivion, but the toothless I’m His, He’s Mine featuring Doechii might be the most unimaginative use of that keyboard riff yet; a startling lack of creativity on an album helmed by literal pop geniuses. Even worse than the lazy sampling is the original material, with most songs on 143 approximating derivative, club-lite music authored by AI. In distancing herself from the doe-eyed goofball of her Teenage Dream days, Perry’s robotic, autotuned vocals are just as anonymous.
On monotonal trap-inspired tracks Gimme Gimme and Artificial, guest rappers 21 Savage and JID sound as bored as Perry. Gorgeous, featuring fellow Dr. Luke associate Kim Petras, is a hollow imitation of Sam Smith and Petras’ smash collab Unholy. Crush aims for the campy charms of Kylie Minogue’s Padam Padam, but is neutered by Perry’s insipid delivery and an oatmeal-bland EDM arrangement that a 12-year-old could knock out on GarageBand in 20 minutes.
We should have known after the release of Women’s World, and yet we hoped...
It’s not difficult to trace how Perry got to this point. In 2010, her endless succession of brightly coloured wigs, kitschy costumes and a Lucille Ball-like stage presence helped candy-coat Teenage Dream’s heavy innuendo, making it irresistible to kids and adults alike. The album spawned a staggering five number-one singles, and 2012’s Prism maintained that momentum off the back of huge tracks including Roar and Dark Horse.
But 2017’s Witness, while more cohesive and self-serious – Perry called it “purposeful pop” – was a commercial and critical failure. The self-helpy Smile, released in 2020, flopped even harder. Four years later, the impulse to keep it simple stupid and make ’em dance again is understandable. Perry has always had ample sex appeal, but trading silliness for a sleek, cyborg-esque sonic aesthetic on 143 robs her of the playful, earnest energy that makes her best tracks so infectious.
It doesn’t help that Perry’s return coincides with the emergence of three bona fide stars in Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, all of whom come with distinctive voices, incisive songwriting chops and strong personalities. Perry’s attempts at more substantive songcraft bombed, so she’s spruiking vacuous beats to disaffected Gen Zs desperate to connect with something original or real, and preferably both. 143 is neither; instead it’s a colossal misstep from which Perry’s career may never recover. Annabel Ross
Fred Again, Ten Days
Fred Again’s surprise Australian tour sold out within hours of its announcement in February, with over a million people scrambling for tickets. Around 100,000 fans of the British producer packed arenas in Melbourne and Sydney over six nights; the remainder could only watch snippets of his freewheeling looping and sampling in the same manner they had over the past three years – via social media.
The artist born Frederick Gibson was relatively unknown outside the UK before 2020. He’d racked up songwriting credits on an impressive 30 per cent of UK number one hits in 2019, but it wasn’t until 2021, at the behest of his mentor Brian Eno (a childhood neighbour of the blue-blooded Gibson), that he decided to put out an album of his own.
Fred Again: His talent’s undeniable, but his new album highlights his glaring absences.
Actual Life captured lockdown ennui with universally relatable, precisely executed sentiments of atomisation, uncertainty and soul-searching. The melancholy We Lost Dancing, which mourned the absence of communal dance floor catharsis during the pandemic, was, like most Fred Again productions, threaded with a filament of hope. “What comes next will be marvellous,” declared his collaborator, the Blessed Madonna, at the track’s end.
In fact, Gibson’s post-lockdown ascension has been nothing short of extraordinary. Actual Life was followed by two equally successful sequel albums, an incendiary set in Boiler Room in London, a collaborative album with Eno, and an outrageously popular run of gigs with fellow producer/DJs Skrillex and Four Tet, playing headline shows at Madison Square Garden and Coachella.
Now Gibson’s back with his first solo LP in two years, Ten Days. He says it’s about some “quiet, intimate moments” of the past year, in which he fell in and out of love, felt numb, then panicked. As usual, however, Gibson channels his emotions largely through the guests that appear on his records, whether it’s strangers on the street he’s interacted with and recorded, friends monologuing about their relationships and insecurities, or high-profile singers and rappers interpreting his lyrics.
Ten Days moves through moods from buoyant (Adore U, with soulful Nigerian vocalist Obongjayar; Places to Be, with rappers Anderson Paak and Chika) to reflective/romantic (Ten with Jozzy and Jim Legxacy; Fear Less, where Sampha’s grainy, gorgeous falsetto floating above swooning chords and glowy pads recalls Drake’s Hold On, We’re Going Home) to downright sad, as on Where Will I Be, which feeds Emmylou Harris’ voice through autotune and adds warped, wobbly strings to heighten the sense of instability.
I Saw You, Gibson’s only solo number on the album, is a highlight. Ambient, elegiac blear hangs over the track like a spectral fog, speaking to Gibson’s 15-year history of working with Eno, while his voice, soaring over and cracking through the atmosphere, might be his best embodiment of heartbreak yet.
Mid-album cut Glow is the other standout. Made with Gibson’s buddies Skrillex and Four Tet, alongside British producers Duskus and Joy Anonymous, it’s a seven-and-a-half minute instrumental that benefits from Four Tet’s obvious influence in warm synths that squiggle through the track like bioluminescent worms.
Gibson’s talent is undeniable, and his knack for agreeable stadium-sized dance pop is nothing to be sniffed at. His albums flow seamlessly, like DJ mixes, making them the very rare kind of LPs that Gen Z will listen to start to finish, and are improbably appropriate for both introspection and house parties, a quality that Gibson exploits to maximum effect when going full ham live.
But even as it lands a gut punch, there are curious absences from Gibson’s music too – his personality, and a degree of experimentation and daring (see Jamie XX’s recent output) that would signify growth between albums rather than consistency. Annabel Ross
MJ Lenderman, Manning Fireworks
Each generation has its slacker gods, those reticent chroniclers of cultural disillusionment whose anti-star demeanour belies their expressive wisdom. The ’80s and ’90s had J Mascis and Stephen Malkmus.
The ’00s had Julian Casablancas (sorta) and Mike Skinner (kinda), the ’10s had Courtney Barnett and Mac DeMarco. The ’20s look increasingly like they’re bound to belong to MJ Lenderman.
MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks: an instant classic.
When the Asheville, North Carolina native – real name Mark Jacob Lenderman – toured Australia earlier this year, he was the opening support act for his own buzzy day band, Wednesday; on stage, he stood unassumingly in the far corner and casually blared out guitar heroics like a bedroom phenom.
Next tour, that order’s likely to be reversed, considering how Lenderman’s solo career has been slouching towards stardom. In Manning Fireworks, the 25-year-old’s fourth studio album, he’s created an instant classic.
Manning Fireworks is the official follow-up to his 2022 breakout, Boat Songs, an album that opened with favourite Hangover Game, a song that riffed conspiratorially on Michael Jordan’s infamous flu game and the sort of online ephemera that pepper our waking lives. It appeared on countless year’s best lists. Proving Lenderman’s ballooning profile, last year he also featured heavily on alt-country star Waxahatchee’s acclaimed release, Tigers Blood.
But as a showcase of Lenderman’s gifts, Manning Fireworks is astonishing. As a writer, he’s Raymond Carveresque; with an economy of words, he instantly renders characters that define suburban malaise. There’s the “coward cutting Joker lips into a rubber mask” (Joker Lips), or the deadbeat Boomer he scolds with a “go rent a Ferrari and sing the blues/ believe that Clapton was the second coming” (She’s Leaving You).
On the churning Wristwatch, there’s the desperate loser bragging about his “beach home up in Buffalo, and a wristwatch with a compass and a telephone … a wristwatch that tells me I’m on my own,” Lenderman sings wryly. It’s a Todd Solondz film put to chords.
These songs, specifically, draw Lenderman into a new school of young male songwriters writing unequivocally about pathetic men (wait for ex-Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep’s upcoming solo debut, The New Sound), and finding dark humour and existential truths in the embarrassing crisis of masculinity that’s turned Andrew Tate into a thing.
If Manning Fireworks feels grander and more ambitious in its ideas than Boat Songs, Lenderman, with his working-class vibe and timeless licks, is classically unpretentious about it. The album is filled with the ironic asides and clever back-porch poetry that he seems to jot on used diner napkins or his Notes app.
The 25-year-old, who daylights for indie band Wednesday, has been slouching towards stardom with his solo career. Credit: Karly Hartzman
There’s evocative couplets like, “Kahlua shooter, DUI scooter” (Joker Lips), and casually dystopian imagery of post-capitalist, Web 3.0 absurdity: “We sat under a half-mast McDonald’s flag” (You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In); “Deleted scene of Lightning McQueen, blacked out at full speed” (Rudolph). Lenderman’s not so much angry or apathetic like slacker gods of the past, but an aloof observer wading through our cultural detritus without any pretence to how we might be saved.
A generational guitar shredder shouldn’t be able to write this well, so it’s only fair that sometimes the words don’t come – or, rather, come in a sort of post-mumblecore disaffection. “I had a thought but I forgot,” Lenderman shrugs in On My Knees, before a searing guitar solo breaks in to speak with authority. As every ’90s kid knows, you could pin an identity on that shrug. But Zoomers, this shrug’s for you. Robert Moran
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