Dawn Richard

Blackheart is obtuse, diffuse, invigorating, exhausting. It confuses contradiction with thematic coherence, hypocrisy with helpful life advice, an “I can’t feel my face” brand of drug abuse with loose-limbed cool, Grammy-qualifying sex-appeal with Grammy-worthy expertise. It is thoroughly pleased with itself, reveling in its cleverness, condescending, constantly declaring how smart it is in dumb ways, how competent it is in unfettered flashes of brilliance. It’s quest-like in its breadth, breath-like in its pace, both totally overproduced and overly total in its sonic scope. It spends more time and effort aping genres than trying to understand them, which it probably knows it’s doing, but it also knows that you won’t know the difference. It looks down on you, a tower of ashes built from the remains of heartbreak and assholishness and shitty business and MTV reality and girl group venality, while you resent it for such but also intuitively know that it is better than you. Or richer than you, prettier than you, saucier than you, eager that you embrace these truths and still try to enjoy your life somehow. Let Dawn Richard help, the Morning Star, the Princess of Darkness, the Devil Who Wears Prada: there are times during Blackheart when I feel as if I am listening to the electro-R&B manifestation of Satan—so manipulative, licentious, indulgent this album sounds. It is indulgence. It is a Terrence Malick voice-over; it is showing your friends your lavish vacation photos; it is a Fred Durst sex tape; it is an episode of Serial; it is Robert Durst burping his way, despite everything he’s done, into our hearts. It is nearly impossible to describe without accepting all that it is, and tolerating all that it isn’t. It isn’t cohesive, or consistent, or orderly, or even all that comprehensible. Yet, my God it is something I want, all of it, desire coring down to the bone of me: It is everything we loved and everything we hated about pop music in 2015.