Checking out new alt-pop on the Jukeboc under the sea…
[Video]
[8.29]
[8]
Iain Mew: I’ve listened to her album a lot; it’s fantastic. My favourite moments are some of the more unexpected sounds, the ones that come across like breakbeat Let’s Eat Grandma or Marina + the Diamonds taken to illogical extremes. “Be the Girl!” on the other hand is a shopworn melody over pretty much the default mode of synthy alt-pop for more than a decade. Even then, she’s bold enough in how far she stretches the scale of it for it work, if less well as a standalone than as epic closer.
[7]
Alfred Soto: The confidence with which “Be the Girl!” encompasses an emotional lifetime in five minutes had me catching my breath: it’s like The Waves but with sequencers.
[8]
Nortey Dowuona: Respect is very easy to gain. It actually doesn’t come from assimilating into the fears of others or the fantasies of your parents nor the schemes of your friends. It comes from doing right by yourself and then doing right by others. The problem with this is that many people do not actually respect themselves, nor do they want anyone with respect to be at the levers of power. Not even out of any major conspiracy, it’s simply easier to deal with someone who lets you have only the agency to destroy yourself, destroy others, destroy what they fear, not to build and create. One of the lies of individuality as a marketing plan is that it is possible to live in the world without other people. You are reading these words on a website not coded by me. You are reading this website on a laptop, phone or tablet not made by you. You are reading this website in the midst of building a piece you will not even get to use. But when you do your job well, do it in a way where you retain a refusal to give up more and more of whatever good qualities you have to gain power, you gain the most power in respect. And respect, like trust, is very easy to lose, and once gone, squander whatever you can, since the respect and trust you will need as your body begins to weaken and fail is long gone and will have you speared immediately by your spine. But fight, scrape, howl to keep hold of respect and trust, since once they’re both gone, you can’t buy them back.
[10]
Hannah Jocelyn: I don’t love the vocal sound at the beginning (blaming engineer Mitch McCarthy), but once this gets going it’s gorgeous, like some weird mix of “Dancing On My Own” and “Toy Soldiers.” The ad-libs toward the end add so much character to the song and keep it from being another ’80s retread. “Be the Girl!” can function as a breakup song, a loss-of-innocence song, and a liberation simultaneously; the characters here used each other to avoid the pain of growing up, with lyrics like “we were running from the worries in your eyes”. This is definitely a reach, but I can also imagine this as a transmasc-adjacent anthem about breaking free from femininity, best enjoyed with Boy Jr’s “Zitty Stardust”. Whatever it is, it’s special, and I look forward to going back at the end of the year and wondering why a vocal sound kept me from giving this a [10].
[8]
Claire Davidson: As an aspirational pop anthem, “Be the Girl!” is remarkably well-structured, opening with a gentle keyboard line that gives way to more colorful synths as the song grows more sure of itself, textures that are just ramshackle enough to add some character while avoiding full-on 8-bit gimmickry. Imagine Carly Rae Jepsen at her commercial peak, add in a Gen-Z appropriate level of tongue-in-cheek, bedroom pop kitsch, and you’d get something akin to what Hemlocke Springs accomplishes here — a parallel that feels particularly in step with the track’s exhortation to embrace vulnerability as a path to real love, a brand of sincerity that’s very much in Jepsen’s lane. “Be the Girl!” feels slightly underpowered by Springs’s vocal performance: she’s an effective performer at her most eccentric, but when asked to belt with more straightforward power, her delivery becomes slightly nasal, a symptom of inexperience more than anything else. That the song’s seams should be apparent to the audience might well be the best demonstration of its message that Hemlocke Springs could offer, though — in embracing imperfection, she’s made an eager listener out of me.
[7]
Al Varela: It’s easy to look back at your past self and feel a bit of embarrassment. You thought you knew it all, but you had no idea what was in store for you. Now it feels like that version of you is so far away. You can choose to either leave them behind or envy what they used to have. But Hemlocke Springs knows you can’t just be the girl again. You’ve changed so much. Yet, this song still feels like a celebration of that girl you used to be. The huge build-up of synths and keys, as if the platform beneath Hemlocke Springs is rising towards the sky, feels so grand and incredible. Arpeggios that keep the song moving but keep the focus squarely on Hemlocke Spring’s passionate singing, full of love and joy for that younger version of herself who would eventually figure things out. It’s a triumph that Hemlocke Springs can no longer be the girl she used to know, because it means she’s truly grown and there’s so much ahead of her in the future. Hemlocke Springs is the same age as I am, so I know exactly what she means. You’re not the same person you were when you were 21 and fresh out of college. Life takes you wild places and you still have decades of life to experience. So give that younger version of yourself some grace. You wouldn’t be here without them.
[10]