Eccentricity goes a long way to make an artist stand out, and whether that comes in the way of sheer rawness, charm and candor coming together or just sheer mastery in one’s performance, there is always a form of eccentricity that I appreciate first and foremost.
Enter Chymes, an Australian alternative pop artist who has truly mastered her work. Her latest work, Alien is a perfect example of what she’s best at: taking risks and crafting something entirely her own after being influenced by the grossly underrated Australian music scene and her time writing and spending time among K-Pop’s biggest acts.
Her newest EP shows the pop phenomenon at her most high-concept and extraterrestrial (which I’m sure is intentional) as she darts her flirtatiously eccentric vocal prowess through six tracks of pop tunes that take cues from K-Pop, hyperpop touches from the PC Music Camp and even the early 2010s brat-pop brought on by acts like Kesha or Charli XCX (whom sidenote, yes, has been brat since her inception) and does it all with the flair of a veteran performer complete with backup dancers and well-realized visual concepts. EP highlight “Sweet” is a song so well-produced that listening to it with eyes closed causes one to easily conjure a music video in your imagination and choreography to match.
The EP sprawls through a theme of intergalactic hyper-pop concepts that admittedly feel a bit too static for me to really give it the full thumbs-up with sonically, tracks like “Voodoo Doll” not really doing a lot to set itself apart from most pop music coming in the 2020s and “Sour” leaving me conflicted as the production presents so many sonic left turns that fall an inch short of going full-frontal explosive in a result that I can only describe as a tad derivative of Chloe Moriondo’s sophomore album hyperpop pivot with the hook especially feeling a bit too close to “Hotel for Clowns” despite my fondness for the vocal panning effect. My biggest critique however comes in the fact that K-Pop’s biggest staples come from this sleek production and performance style that feels sterile and while it does capture the Close-Encounters-of-the-Third-Kind-but-pop spirit this EP is going for, it ironically does feel like the very thing holding this EP back from true greatness.
It’s definitely admirable that Chymes has embraced her oddities and differences on her newest release and the EP does put its best feet forward, with UFO being an odd banger that definitely captures the titular Alien feel she’s going for and again, Sweet being a highlight (repeating twice because I’ve had this song on repeat a couple times now) plus despite my more notable criticisms, I still do love the sheer artistry on display here. I’m in awe of how well-done and clearly extraterrestrial Chymes can be on Alien, and for that I give this EP my consent to be taken into a UFO to party in the stars.
