- PC Music's resident experimentalist revels in colourful chaos on their second LP.
- felicita delights in moving between extremes at whiplash speed, pushing the parameters of PC Music with every release. The London-based artist's approach to the label's warped pop maximalism has always felt mercurial and, at times, vulnerable. felicita's 2018 album hej! showed how they could pull off both bubblegum floor-fillers and ethereal ballads inspired by their Polish heritage, finding the sweet spot between the label's characteristic abrasion and a softness that was all their own. Spalarkle, felicita's second LP, is their most ambitious project and—for better or worse—restless with ideas.
Spalarkle feels less like a record than a living, breathing organism with its own free will. Opening track "Spalarkling" is rave-pop whirring to life, the muffled synths gaining unsteady, bambi-legged momentum. We then arrive at "Spalarkle (Alys)", a fizzing anthem in the PC Music tradition were it not for moments where Caroline Polachek contrasts her unhinged screams with ornate, almost choral vocals. The two opposing forces clash in an interesting way: listening to it calls to mind the behind-the-scenes shot of Kirsten Dunst's Marie Antoinette holding a MacBook.
The album works best when felicita's Slavic folk influences collide with their instinct for off-kilter pop music. "Can You See The Light?" is rather strange, locked in a haunting waltz with itself, but the twitchy tongue-clicks elevate it to a newfound realm of dance music. Even when you think you've reached the end, the vocals re-emerge, backed by distant rhythmic hand-claps that sound more like a military march. "Sex With Anemone," with its swelling, metallic synths, gives an otherworldly effect like a projection from another universe where transhuman sex with a flower is entirely possible. felicita achieves these cinematic feats through the scale and grandeur of their sounds, making for fascinating storytelling.
This pleasant spell quickly gives way to a rude awakening, starting with "Cluck," which calls on usual PC Music suspects Kero Kero Bonito. It's a baffling parody of everything you've come to expect from the label, but maybe that's the point? Punctuated with chicken squawks, vocalist Sarah Midori Perry babbles about how, "These mutated new roosters are looking tremendously buff / With the muscle we love," before dissolving into a bizarre incantation of "I'm a chicken, I'm a chicken," repeated ad nauseam. felicita repeats the trick with "Riff Raff," featuring the nursery-rhyme cadence of vocalist OhEm ("I'm a puffy puffer fish / Bite your finger if you wish"), though its naive gibberish feels unusually dated for an artist who usually has their gaze set on the future.
Throughout their felicita has shown a masterful command of creating an atmosphere that is distinctly off. In toying with the discordant and the offbeat, Spalarkle's sound design never feels quite right, in the best way possible. Usually, felicita opts for a soft touch to create this off texture, but on "Beast" they all but bludgeon us around the head with a hammer. Featuring Hong Kong rapper YoungQueenz, whose hoarse, maniacal delivery drags the album to an ear-bleeding extremity, the track is by far one of the album's most thrilling moments. It feels like an emissary from another project entirely, some portent of an era yet to come.
With this push-and-pull between the dazzlingly new and the overfamiliar, Spalarkle lacks a sense of cohesion, constantly chasing after the next white rabbit. On the one hand, it's exciting to behold. On the other, it's disjointed and sometimes exhausting to try to connect with. The soft underbelly of felicita's music is where the real glimmers of brilliance lie—the digitally-assisted ballad "Resistance" beautifully reconciles their playfulness with sincerity. When felicita finds a way to bring repelling forces together, they shine.
Tracklist01. Spalarkling
02. Spalarkle (Alys) feat. Caroline Polachek
03. Can You See The Light Over There?
04. Cluck feat. Kero Kero Bonito
05. Sex With Anemone
06. Afraid
07. Beast feat. YoungQueenz
08. ForeS Hopi
09. Resistance
10. Riff Raff feat. OhEm
11. Exolight Shade