It has been quite a busy time for Grimes since her 2015 record Art Angels. Since then Grimes, née Boucher, has experienced a slew of record label troubles, began dating Elon Musk, and is now apparently with child, all while holding off fans ravenous for new music. When her relationship with the Tesla mogul began, many distraught fans joked that Grimes’ new record would be about the evils of unionizing and robots. At the time, who would have guessed that they were half right? Miss Anthropocene is a record about the deification of climate change, with the record’s dreamlike pop/nu-metal tracks focusing on various modern evils, like AI. I know.

The question begs to be asked: Why? I’m not sure, perhaps this is simply a response to the reception to Grimes’ last record Art Angels - a record that she described as “crap” and as a “stain on [her] life”. This negative response, however, was partly described by her to be the result of critics misinterpreting the album’s songs and almost ironic optimistic art-pop feel. As a big fan of the record, I believe that it is one of the definitive art-pop records that should be held somewhere in a museum for obscure genres that only pretentious people know the name of. Whether or not Miss Anthropocene’s dejected and dreary tone is a result of her past criticism - it is worth noting that it is all over the fucking place.

Grimes seems like the aloof and cryptic friend that does things nobody ever understands, but who somehow always comes through or says something funny. She seems like the type to make you a meal made out of all the random sauces colonizing your fridge, and despite knowing you shouldn’t like it, you enjoy it though you can’t help but speculate as to what her motivation could have possibly been. Grimes seems like the fleshy avatar being manipulated by a higher being of pure randomness, chaos, and intention. She is the “heat death of the universe” personified, and Miss Anthropocene embodies this perfectly.

The album begins with “So Heavy I Fell Through I Fell Through the Earth”, a track full of breathy and ethereal harmonizing over a spacy and ambient instrumental. The lyrics are almost impossible to parse, but it doesn’t matter. Somehow this song takes you to another world, and if you assumed this song had something to do with being pregnant, then you would be correct. A meditation on the consideration of a future life in the present, this song is a six-minute introduction into the current life of Grimes. It is beautiful, it is magical, it sounds like Enya. It is also succeeded by “Darkseid” featuring 潘PAN, a track that struggles with defining the impact that one’s suicide has on the people in their life. Originally intended for Lil Uzi Vert, the track is dark, bass-heavy, and mechanical goth banger that has almost nothing in common with the previous track. This is a common theme on Miss Anthropocene.

The record’s thematic register bounces between love, death, and every evil and virtue in-between. There are intense moments that are emotionally and politically charged like “Violence” featuring an instrumental made by DJ and mau5trap affiliate i_o. Grimes’ perfectly polished vocals pair amazingly with the steady synths while she sings from the perspective of Earth. There are saccharine and touching moments like the busy “IDORU” that arrives at the album’s final act. One of the most moving instances on this record is the track “Delete Forever”, written and composed by Grimes herself. Her pained lyrics turn elegiac as she dwells on her lost friends due to substance abuse and overdoses, singing “Funny how they think us naive when we're on the brink, innocence was fleeting like a season, cannot comprehend, lost so many men, lately, all their ghosts turn into reasons and excuses”. I was touched when she likened her state of almost perpetual mourning and emotional isolation to having been in a war, because the dissonance between one’s interior and exterior in moments of tragedy mirror the tension that remains far after the dust settles. The lyrics hit hard, and resonate with anyone who has lost someone close to them because of addiction, mental illness, or the tragic combination of the two. The guitar sample elicits a bluegrass-adjacent innocence that strives to make the starkly different tone of the lyrics stand out. “Delete Forever” is perhaps one of the most moving tracks I’ve heard in the past few years, as the self-reflection it forces on the listener makes me wish more of my friends were around to hear it. The unfairness of losing people you love to an epidemic and culture that glorifies their passing is just as terrifyingly dismal as any apocalypse that climate change could cause.

Musically the album may be all over the place, but thematically the album stays consistent with its somber subject matter and experimental style. Even though Grimes covers so much ground in only 11 songs, she does so with nuance and expertise that many fans may have missed from Art Angels. Very rarely is an album like this worth the wait after so long, and I am pleased to say that I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of Grimes’ muddled vocal harmonies, synth arrangements, and percussion. This is especially true on the track “4ÆM”, which evolves from an elegant and seductive track with east-Asian percussion and melodies to a high-octane banger that can only be heard to believe. While listening for the first time, I enjoyed “4ÆM” but I wondered “Where could this possibly be going?”, and before I knew it Grimes gracefully allowed the song to descend back into its previous ambient harmonies like a pilot would land a prized aircraft. This time around Grimes is not letting anyone down, as she has finally found the perfect synthesis between her older experimental styles and her newer pop-oriented ones.

Part of me is unsure how or when to conclude a review of Miss Anthropocene so I will attempt to put it as plainly as possible: while this record is strange beyond belief, it has a little bit of something for everyone. Whether or not you’re a Grimes fan doesn’t matter, as Boucher has been sure to masterfully arrange and manicure this album into one of the strongest projects of her career. Though it is likely that we won’t get another album from her for a while, I will be sure to await her inevitable return eagerly as if she had never left. Speaking from past experience, it would be unwise to bet against Grimes.

FAVORITE TRACKS:

Delete Forever

Violence

4ÆM

Rating: 9

Listen to Miss Anthropocene here:

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