Zig

Chronique

It's been nearly a decade since the world was introduced to Poppy—performance artist and musician Moriah Rose Pereira's alter ego—via unnerving YouTube videos of her pretending to be an android pretending to be a human. It only got weirder when she began releasing songs heavily influenced by nü metal. On Poppy's fifth album, she continues her evolution, creating dark Grimes-esque pop with industrial goth tendencies, while still singing about commodification and consumerism and how it's going to kill us all. "Life is a commercial for death/ And you're hypnotized by the advertisement," she sings—her voice alternately buried in gobs of fuzz and twinned by a shrieking version of herself—on "Church Outfit," which rips a thundering elephantine snort. Poppy tries on a Britney Spears babydoll voice for the deep club thump of "Knockoff," comparing love to luxury: "I don't want no/ Want no knockoff/ Want that real shit/ Real authentic ... Polyester hurts my skin … " That song also features a call-and-response with what sounds like AI; it's a fun nod to her beginnings, as is the droid-like delivery on "Flicker." Likewise, "1s + 0s" is uncanny-valley off-kilter, its synthetic beats not quite meshing with the romantic melody. The album was co-written with Simon Wilcox (Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato) and producer Ali Payami (The Weeknd, Taylor Swift)—two people who know their way around a radio pop song—and it sometimes feels like the trio is breeding new hybrids. A maddening earworm, "Zig" is a Shakira-esque banger ( "When you zig, I zag/ When you zig, I zag/ A zig zag") that gets Poppy-fied with super heavy subterranean beats. "Linger" starts off confoundingly normal, like an '80s hair-metal ballad, before morphing into warped R&B. High-gloss "Motorbike" is irresistible art pop with a guest turn from Wilcox, who intones (through what sounds like an anonymous voice changer): "I wonder why nothing catches my eye/ Quite like the sight/ of a girl with a powerful machine between her legs." "[Motorbike] is a song about power and being in control, but it's also about being sexual and fun and okay with femininity," Poppy has said. " Whenever I see a girl on a motorcycle, I always stare at her a little bit longer than I do a guy. If I see a guy on a motorcycle, I think, ‘Oh, what bike is that?'" And she comes on like bizarro Carly Rae Jensen for thrill ride "Prove It," veering from butter-wouldn't-melt sweetness to full-on brat punk, getting heavier and wilder with each cycle. "I'm on the wall of a gallery, put on display/ A combination of mistakes in a picture frame/ Put me up for sale for a price you cannot pay." You can look, you can touch, but Poppy belongs to no one. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz