There is a woman in a horse mask singing about loneliness over a beat that sounds like a county fair caught fire, and somehow it is the most sincere thing I have heard all week. horsegiirL built an entire universe out of a barnyard gag: the stable, the pony puns, the farmyard-rave character that should have worn thin two singles ago and instead keeps deepening. lonely 2night brings Rocket Rese into the pen, and the pairing works because neither of them plays it for a wink. The production is that crunchy, sugar-rotted hyperpop where every synth is shoved into the red and the melody still finds a way to ache underneath. She spent this year rolling out her debut album and selling the horse bit as an actual worldview, humans are part of nature, log off, touch grass, and the joke stopped being a joke somewhere around the second chorus. What gets me is how a song this loud can feel this lonely. The hook loops with that specific 3am ache where the party is still going and you have already left it in your head. Most hyperpop hides its feelings behind the distortion. This one turns the distortion up to say the feeling louder. Nobody expected the horse to be the one telling the truth.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.