Maggie Rogers’ career has been buoyed by one song: Alaska, released in October 2016 after a clip of Pharrell Williams being bowled over by it went viral. Since then, Rogers has amassed three million monthly listeners on Spotify, done well-received live shows, and performed on Saturday Night Live, all with only an EP (and Bandcamp juvenilia) to her name. Now her debut album is here. Has it done justice to that evident promise? Unfortunately, what made Rogers stand out – a warmly idiosyncratic voice and a strong grasp of melody made less conventional with looping samples and unexpected beats – is still best showcased by her 2017 EP, Now That the Light Is Fading.
The best songs on this album are those that appeared on the EP, such as On + Off – with its woozy, insistent vocal layering set to soft dubstep. Alaska also appears, as it must, looming over the rest of the album. The song remains well-crafted, the satisfying union between music and lyrics marking it out as a cut above the average viral hit. But on the album, Alaska sucks the energy out of the songs positioned either side of it: certainly the mid-tempo groover The Knife and lighter-waving ballad Light On don’t put up much of a fight. But Rogers’ elegant knack for production is subsumed by more prosaic emotional balladry on her debut, with lyrics that rely too heavily on imagery of light and dark. Illustrating this tendency is the recent single Fallingwater, unmemorable for all the gospel touches and devoid of edge. Even this song, however – unremarkable in the context of the album – Rogers transformed into something truly compelling during her recent barefoot performance on SNL. She clearly has talent, but this album does its best to dim her light.
