On this beguiling second album by New York singer Kaya Wilkins, it’s as if heartbreak has been translated into her native Norwegian and back again via some dodgy machine learning: there’s something wonderfully off about her tales of thwarted lust. An excruciating date is sketched out on Zero Interaction Ramen Bar as “my parasite and I are blushing: a cold one and a sentient dumpling”. At another point she disarmingly admits: “I know sex with me is mediocre / but I can give you asexual wellbeing.” Perhaps the sense of wonkiness is pharmacological in nature. “What if the pills I take will stop me getting wet?” she frets on one of the best tracks, opener Baby Little Tween, and Psych Ward has her dutifully necking more pills as chaos reigns: “Crisis management on the intercom in the psych ward,” she notes with dry detachment, a really funny moment.
Mitski’s arch confessionals have surely been influential, and there is a touch of Julia Holter or Mega Bog’s pristine strangeness. Like the second two, Wilkins recalls the sweeping R&B ballads of the 1950s and 60s, though there is also some effective disco-pop – like 94-second curiosity Mother Nature’s Bitch – as well as ambient. Stretches of forgettable melody writing kill the mood somewhat, particularly towards the end, but the best songs – Insert Generic Name, Guttural Sounds – truly put the dream in dream-pop: rapturous, vivid compositions that drift down Wilkins’ very particular neurological pathways.
