YEULE - Glitch Princess

It matters little that Yeule chooses to present herself under another pseudonym, in the robotic introduction entrusted to "My Name Is Nat Ćmiel". Nobody cares, least of all her. There's precious little human about the folds of "Glitch Princess", and the fact that it was composed by a musician from Singapore based in London loses all relevance. An alien record, even more so than a "Serotonin II" that had already introduced in painstaking detail the narcoleptic universe of its author, this second album is the story of a glitched-out avatar, the wandering of a dissociated soul, torn between incessant doomscrolling and a sense of impending catastrophe, pursued with elusive precision. Alienation and self-destruction, sickness and desire animate an album that pushes even further the already frayed contours of a liquefied pop, barely grazed by a sense of melody, before retreating once again in search of a new glitch, a new signal of disturbance to lash out at. Fascinating? That's a matter of perspective.

It isn't so hard, especially in times of deep uncertainty and crisis, to identify with the depths of a digital nightmare, to lose sight of reality in order to seek oblivion elsewhere, destruction among the infinite corners of the web. For this reason too, even more than on the first album, the voice becomes an uncertain hiss, a dejected chant, the vehicle for thoughts that struggle to organize themselves, against a backdrop of looming apocalypse. The sonic material, faithful to the title and thus in search of a glitch, an inconsistency to cling to, also takes a path of progressive abstraction, an indeterminacy that only occasionally allows for a melodic pretense (the emo-pop sprint of "Don't Be So Hard On Your Own Beauty", a true outlier in the collection) or displays faint dancefloor leanings (the isolationist trance of "Bites On My Neck"). The concept, in short, reigns undisturbed: the android proceeds, reflects, invariably suffers, while the world explodes around it, with no redemption ever appearing on the horizon.

Within this thematic cohesion, pursued with great dedication, lies also the main limit of the whole operation. Too preoccupied with narrating itself, with illustrating its halting progress through the world, the cyborg lacks the proper charisma, a sense of nuance that would give the songs character and three-dimensionality. Whether it's the heavy tone of a gothic ballad in the vein of Soap & Skin ("Eyes"), the ghostly dancehall of "Too Dead Inside", or a lullaby for broken-down androids like "Friendly Machine", Yeule's whispers remain stuck in place, a flat wandering without real communicative edge. Of course, given the thematic choice, such catatonia might even make sense, but when there's a "Don't Be So Hard..." standing as a counterpoint to the rest of the record, a sense of frustration builds over the wasted opportunity. The 284 minutes of "The Things They Did For Me Out Of Love" (a bonus track on the digital edition), all dronic stretching, feel like overkill.

Perhaps Yeule will find the fatal glitch and move on to another plane of existence, perhaps she'll manage to give her path a less isolationist imprint. Either way, what's needed is a jolt to shake up an imagination too busy gazing at itself.

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16/03/2022