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Loma Vista | discogs.com
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MASSEDUCTION announced itself with a pair of buttocks.
Hot-pink tights stretched across the vertical of the album’s cover, flattered on one end by a ferocious cheetah-print leotard, the other terminating in a pair of stilettos the colour of blood.
Annie Clark highlighted her chosen asset against a belligerent background of passionate, burning crimson, a red so red that it defied belief.
Fuck your retinas, she said, I’ve got something to say.
And what a something it was. That album incinerated the boundaries between sex and drugs and love, conmingling ecstasies and comedowns in a mighty neon art-pop inferno.
If MASSEDUCTION was a technicolour whirl of a night out, all strobing strangers and synths and sensations, then MassEducation is getting turnt at home, enjoying the camaraderie of close company, gathering round an old upright to spill a verse or two. There are no lurid pinks or sickening primaries here. Only the domesticity of the incandescent bulb: harsher, smaller, honest.
This is a tear-blurred afterimage scored for solo voice and creaky piano, a negative that inverts everything MASSEDUCTION stood for, scorched into existence by the sheer intensity of its progenitor. Like an afterimage, it fades quickly. But also like an afterimage, it hums with imagined beauty, each virtual spark illuminating a new, unvarnished facet of a familiar idea.
The sexy wardrobe montage of ‘Savior’ shifts from a latex-snapping strut to a genuinely goofy plod; ‘Los Ageless’ trades funky bite for dusky flavour; the swooning rush of ‘Sugarboy’ literalises the obvious metaphor with toothsome, twinkling arpeggios. ("Sugargirl / Dissolve in me / Got a crush on kicked-in teeth")
Such simple, square piano arrangements initially struck me as underused, seldom developing or supporting motifs from the vocal lines. But as the album unfolds, MassEducation makes a case for perfunctory accompaniment: Annie’s singular voice takes its place in the dusty spotlight where every crack and crease is on full display. She has always wavered somewhere on the edge of lucidity, dipping into sultry nonchalance and swinging into skyward screams with equal poise. But MASSEDUCTION already smashed its way into hearts and minds and top-ten lists. Annie can afford to dial it down, to hold each song up to the grey light of late evening, to see what gentle colours shine through.
These bare-bones arrangements emphasise the importance of each note, each suspended cadence, each luxurious seventh upgraded to an indulgent ninth. Every track has had its sharp edges softened, its blinding lacquer sanded away to expose the deadly bleeding marrow that has always dwelt beneath. And Annie treats her music with suitable tenderness. ‘Fear the Future’ finds a flattering new form with its apocalyptic 808s substituted for raw manic optimism, while ‘Young Lover’ foregrounds the upper echelons of Annie’s range, shrieks of desperate horror transformed into gasps of languished exasperation. She’s never sounded more tired than when she croaks:
“Young lover, I miss the taste of your tongue /
Young lover, I wish my love was enough”
And she’s never sounded more assured than when she asserts:
“Mass destruction /
I can’t turn off what turns me on”
Warped backup vocals and snapping basslines can brag all they like, but on MassEducation this is a sober statement of fact.
The seemingly immutable tracklist has been shuffled around, to interlock in fascinating new ways. ‘Pills’, for one, has been recontextualised from the album’s thesis statement to a final reprise, Annie’s gasping, frenzied chanting looping off the rails as the single take spools on and on. Most importantly, the two grimmest tracks of the original album have been shifted — once petering out as the album’s coda, they now stand at the beginning and the midpoint of MassEducation, completely remapping the album’s contour. ‘Smoking Section’ was once a final parting shot, but now its nihilistic refrain (“it’s not the end / let it happen”) sits at the nadir, an inflection point between two acts. In the process of paring back, Annie has unearthed surprisingly strong singalong balladry from new curtain-raiser, ‘Slow Disco’.
With MASSEDUCTION’s brutal comedown redistributed, what could replace it but 'Hang On Me'? The original album’s opener now closes the show as a microcosm of the redux: prediction turned to recollection; wild abandon soothed into a warmer, safer melancholy.
And she’s never sounded more assured than when she asserts:
“Mass destruction /
I can’t turn off what turns me on”
Warped backup vocals and snapping basslines can brag all they like, but on MassEducation this is a sober statement of fact.
The seemingly immutable tracklist has been shuffled around, to interlock in fascinating new ways. ‘Pills’, for one, has been recontextualised from the album’s thesis statement to a final reprise, Annie’s gasping, frenzied chanting looping off the rails as the single take spools on and on. Most importantly, the two grimmest tracks of the original album have been shifted — once petering out as the album’s coda, they now stand at the beginning and the midpoint of MassEducation, completely remapping the album’s contour. ‘Smoking Section’ was once a final parting shot, but now its nihilistic refrain (“it’s not the end / let it happen”) sits at the nadir, an inflection point between two acts. In the process of paring back, Annie has unearthed surprisingly strong singalong balladry from new curtain-raiser, ‘Slow Disco’.
With MASSEDUCTION’s brutal comedown redistributed, what could replace it but 'Hang On Me'? The original album’s opener now closes the show as a microcosm of the redux: prediction turned to recollection; wild abandon soothed into a warmer, safer melancholy.
“You and me /
We’re not meant for this world /
So hang on me”
Where once these words foretold a night of violent rapture, they now glow with tender sincerity — a genuine offer of companionship. It’s still a hand stretched out in invitation, but the daring smirk has softened into a friendly smile.
It’s a testament to the strength of the songwriting that the album works both candied in saccharine technicolour and deconstructed into its component hydrocarbons. Each is a completely different experience, and each succeeds on its own terms.
An artist who has never so much as heard the word ‘understatement’ has, for the first time, shown restraint. MassEducation is a low-key smash.