Bedroom pop producer Curtis Waters went viral with hilarious 2020 debut single Stunnin’, which gently and catchily mocked the mindless swag of mainstream rap culture. Turbo-charged by lockdown, it became one of the first huge TikTok hits. A bipolar Nepali living in America, Waters hoped to use stardom to raise awareness around mental health issues. Sadly, the music industry’s inability to understand his complex, shifting outsider identity meant he was unable to leverage his instant success as planned. So he resolved to follow his muse and damn the consequences.
Waters’s debut, Pity Party, was mostly rap-adjacent alt-pop, each track fanfared with the cutely self-exhorting tag “good job, Curtis!” Now he has a go at emo, post-punk and house as well, which makes for an uneven but rarely boring listen. The first half is more derivative, Star Killer and Manic Man riffing on innovators such as Gary Numan and Kurt Cobain, while Himbo limply revisits the soft-voiced satire of Stunnin’. But Bad Son comes good by the end, with songs such as the bracingly weird Riot, American Dream’s intense, beat-free yowl and the yearning, desperate brilliance of Death Keeps Calling My Name.
