GutterPutter

Context

Everyone has to start somewhere if they want to make a name for themselves. The genre of bedroom pop, characterised by its strong lo-fi sensibilities and an amateurish love towards its craft, has spiked up in popularity thanks to the rise of the internet. The prospect of having your work go viral and launch you up into having a loyal cult following makes for a promise that is not worth skipping over. Its homely production value and relative lack of polish has made bedroom pop an especially intimate genre for many and it’s for that reason which allows it to gain its own demographic in recent years.

Heavn is an anonymous musician (like Parannoul) from New York, USA who is an aspiring indie rock musician. Although we know little about him as of now, his website does leave a little bit of who he is. A young auteur who prefers to have complete control over the instruments, he blends some element of pop and electronica into his works based on his first foray into music as a producer. Suburbia is one album that I decided to check out from him. Despite being only 18 according to the website, his debut could easily be one of the more exciting dark horses within 2022.

Review

Suburbia wears its influences like a sleeve as much of its music carries itself through the use of synths while its lyricism takes on a kind of angsty emo. Lasting just over 20 minutes, its short length can leave much to be desired, but that shouldn’t be a distraction from what is ultimately a fuzzy, well-produced, and relatable LP (for the youngsters, that is). Through clear indietronica, the closeness that you could feel with the album is apparent. It’s like listening to a recording from a friend who wanted to try writing breakup songs and they turn out to be better than most of the Billboard hits or the Top 40 that you know of. Too bad much of the songwriting tends to take on a linear pathway.

The bouncy trap beat in ‘Lord of The Flies’, which deals with a mixed feeling of being in an on-off relationship, offers a juvenile sweetness thanks to its featured performance from blackwinterwells. The rockier renditions in ‘Veronica’s Shield’ or ‘You Know’, the latter of which features 8485, shows a certain balance between melancholia and energy that’s reminiscent of Elliott Smith. On the other end, the upbeat drumming in ‘Queen of Puppets’ and ‘Same Old Everything makes for a distinctive little treasure that, in one way or the other, actually feels cute in its own way. Helping with that as well is the catchy chorus and bits of scat singing which further adds to the intimacy of the album.

Throw in the fingerplaying in ‘Symphony of Envy’, ‘The Elder Sister’, or the slow strums in ‘Hemmingway Graves’, Suburbia takes pride in its emotional weight. The sense of unrequited love, daydreaming of romance, and division carries itself throughout the album with the wailing in the background. “Its me and you/ not you and him/ Oh yes it’s true,” came the bittersweet chorus in ‘Red Silhouette’ which depicts a contrast between imagining a first-time face-to-face meeting with an online love and how they might be in a relationship in their personal life. Capping it off with ‘The Middle Part’, you can’t help but feel that there’s a certain ghastliness with its echoey vocals and its hard-to-decipher lyrics. Whatever it might be is not up to us to find out – it’s not listed in the artist’s Bandcamp so it could have been a hidden track that is meant to signify the sense of mundaneness.

“The Suburbia is just a normal place with normal people. you think. everything seems the same every day nothing changes.” That’s the main description of the album. Nevertheless, Suburbia takes us on a winding path that takes apart the conventions of teenage love and heartbreak. In reconstructing it, we are left with the subtext of an online relationship that, because it doesn’t fit with the physical intimacy of high school romance, is at risk of withering.

What if it’s just simple love? That’s a possibility, but I personally argue that the motif of the phone, the dreaming, and the general theme of a gap that’s both social and physical points to a subversive love between two individuals from other states. Throw in the description, and we are left with what is a tragedy. In starting with physical contact and the use of clothes, the short album presents a captivating withering of a complex, and futile, relationship.