Track Listing
So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth (Art Mix)
Darkseid
Delete Forever
Violence
4ÆM
New Gods
My Name is Dark
You’ll miss me when I’m not around
Before the fever
IDORU
We Appreciate Power feat. HANA
So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth (Algorithm Mix)
Violence (Club Mix)
My Name is Dark (Algorithm Mix)
IDORU (Algorithm Mix)
Labeling Grimes’ latest album Miss Anthropocene as art pop feels a little disingenuous to the genius this Canadian artist has managed to inject into her 2020 album. Combining elements of chillout, electronica, Indie and even drum & bass, Miss Anthropocene is a staggeringly good album, one that transcends time and boundaries to produce one of the stand-out albums of the year.
According to Grimes, Miss Anthropocene is a loose concept album inspired by Roman mythology and villainy, with the faint whiff of climate change sprinkled through for good measure. After listening to this numerous times over the past couple of weeks, that much is absolutely apparent, with each repeat listen bringing with it new layers of brilliance to the foreground.
The album itself opens with the beautiful, ethereal “So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth”, a wonderful opener that has the faint glimmers of an Engima record bleeding through the chords and vocals. From here, ‘Darkseid’ adds, well, a dark side to the record that complements the opener but does so with a rising, chaotic cacophony of foreign lyrics. This frantic, urgent poem, when translated, jumps out immediately as one of the more poetic and thought provoking records on the album, and the track composition for this one is second to none.
‘Delete Forever’ and ‘Violence’ pull the album back toward more familiar pop territory, with the former standing out as one of the weakest on the album. Thankfully any doubts for this one are quelled through the changing tones in ‘4ÆM’, switching things again with a drum & bass influence to reinforce the chaotic themes of the album.
‘New Gods’ is a goosebump-inducing dive back into chilled territory with some seriously good chords to boot before progressing through to the final track on the standard album ‘IDORU’, a 7 minute uplifting and psychedelic journey that rounds things out nicely.
The Deluxe edition arguably holds one of the best tracks of the album ‘We Appreciate Power’ which works harmoniously against what’s come before with catchy vocals and a hard, industrial bassline. It’s a surprisingly good record that lends itself nicely to the material across the album, with the rest of the tracks here acting as remixes for some of the more memorable songs on the album.
There’s unlikely to be another album quite like Miss Anthropocene this year. The album delivers a comprehensive and thought provoking message at its core, whilst balancing ideas resting on the edge of science fiction and our own concerning, digitalised future. Boldly stepping into multiple genres and showcasing a myriad of different instruments and compositional techniques in the process, Grimes’ latest album is the perfect musical companion to our chaotic and busy lives, and an album you’ll likely find yourself returning to for a long time to come.
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Verdict - 9/10
9/10