Twenty-five-year-old California singer Remi Wolf makes music for those with a sweet tooth. Her debut album Juno is fluorescently coloured with bright, high-pitched vocals and fizzing with psychedelic instrumentals. But this isn’t mindless pop music. The opener, Liquor Store, as upbeat as it seems on first sip, tackles Wolf’s struggles with alcohol dependency: “Cause I want more, carnivores. Eating my heart out, liquor store,” she sings over a sticky electro-pop beat.
There’s hardly a dull moment on this album. Front Tooth is layered with chaotically fun vocals, but the song peaks at the very end when Wolf screams: “Wake my body up! Please please wake it up!” followed by an equally screamy electric guitar arrangement. Some songs – such as Anthony Kiedis, an ode to the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman – veer into freestyle rambling, but the singsong rapping works on Quiet on Set, which showcases Wolf’s quick-witted rhyming.
Even though the closer, Streets You Live On, is one of the more chart-friendly tracks, ballad-like in its sombre tone, lyrics such as “you’re a magnet pulling my feet and my head off” help to maintain the sense of surrealism that floods this imaginative project.
