"Pop music is made by teams of people," Claire Boucher told Rolling Stone recently. "I make independent music.”
Her next move, the latest chapter in the Grimes story, has been the subject of spiralling speculation, open conjecture and dead ends for years. ‘Art Angels’ is it, and it's everything you expected it to be, and nothing like it. It's not ‘Visions: The Return’, neither is it a series of Zeitgeist-tapping hits in the vein of Go.
At its core, it’s Boucher wrestling with the competing strands of her past releases and influences and winning. It's a thrilling piece of work; proud of its idiosyncratic cool, but frazzled and sharp-tongued. It's the best collection of pop songs released this year, but also the most challenging and confounding.
“I think it's important not to be artistically indebted to anybody if you want to stand for something,” Boucher continued in the Rolling Stone profile.
‘Art Angels’ is that thought made reality. Given that her every move receives a prickly response from somewhere, it’s a powerful statement of individuality from an artist who played every note, built each beat and then spun hooks across them.
It refuses to sit still or pander to easy outs. Its opening salvo - laughing and not being normal, California and Scream, which features an unsettling turn from Aristophanes and Boucher’s barely-contained screams - succeeds in wrong-footing the listener at every turn.
Flesh Without Blood then swirls into a shape that is revisited more than once. A glorious, richly melodic song that doubles as a gleeful fuck you, it leans on Boucher’s guitar and a chugging alt-rock element, including a skittering beat that recalls Waxahatchee’s La Loose more than anything else. "It’s nice that you say you like me, but only conditionally," Boucher sings, delivering a sentiment that works both in the world of the song and beyond its confines.
Boucher repurposes six strings elsewhere to suit more adventurous frameworks. Both Pin and Kill v Maim - an impossibly great rave distilled into a few minutes - make use of distorted chugs amid twisted riffs on dance pop. "I'm only a man, do what I can," Boucher needles on the latter.
REALiTi, released in demo form not long ago, has been beefed up, its ethereal edge tying in to album closers Life in the Vivid Dream and Butterfly just as its rolling gait keeps pace with a midsection that’s near relentless in its shape-shifting quality.
Boucher’s desire to be bracketed alongside Trent Reznor is absolutely on the money. ‘Art Angels’ is meticulous in its presentation and easy to marvel at as a technical achievement. It’s also home to songs and melodies that are absolutely unconventional but deeply satisfying.
Given Boucher's experiences in the bro-heavy industry, notably at the hands of gear-head studio types, she's the artist that modern music needs, if not the one it necessarily deserves. Call her an auteur without the snide grin.
Grimes Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sun March 06 2016 - BRISTOL Anson Rooms
Mon March 07 2016 - LEEDS Beckett University Union
Tue March 08 2016 - NOTTINGHAM Rock City
Thu March 10 2016 - LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
Fri March 11 2016 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Institute
Sat March 12 2016 - MANCHESTER Academy
Sun March 13 2016 - GLASGOW O2 ABC
Tue March 15 2016 - DUBLIN Olympia
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