British dance-pop savant PinkPantheress’ initial appeal was due in no small part to her TikTok-shaped ability with what we’ll call microsongs: concise, relatively conventional pop songs with verses, choruses and often a bridge that last for 90 seconds or less. At the time of her emergence in 2021 it felt like a future of pop, mindful of tradition (via her deep drum n’ bass influences) while reflecting economy of effort and the world’s ever-diminishing attention spans.
Well, that trend hasn’t taken the world by storm, for her or anyone else, yet the good news with PP’s latest mixtape is that she has balanced that approach with more-traditional pop structures much more successfully than on her last album, 2023’s “Heaven Knows.” Although that album was good and spotlighted her inimitable, breathy British-accented vocals — and spawned her biggest hit to date, the Ice Spice duet “Boy’s a Liar” — the songs themselves were sometimes too normal: Super-producer Greg Kurstin and other mainstream hitmakers occasionally neutered what makes this particular pantheress special. To be fair, she may have been trying to break out of the “Y2K meets drum n’ bass” retro model she’d sometimes been dismissively saddled with, but veering into the middle of the road didn’t suit her.
“Fancy That” is a different story: It finds the 24-year-old singer-songwriter-producer focused, confident and seasoned, striking a solid balance between convention and innovation. The songs and the entire mixtape move fast — eight tracks (plus an “intermission”) blaze by in less than 20 minutes — and pack a velvet-gloved punch. She and her collaborators (primarily 23-year-old Norwegian coproducer/cowriter Aksel Arvid, who’s also worked with Amine and Jack Harlow) have peppered the songs with brief, cleverly utilized samples and interpolations, doubling down on the Y2K by including three from Basement Jaxx — whose 2001 album “Rooty” is one of the best of that era — and one each from Underworld and William Orbit, along with Gamble & Huff and even Panic! at the Disco’s “Do You Know What I’m Seeing?” on “Tonight.”
All the elements of her best work are here: tight hooks, fast tempos, skittering beats and percolating bass, but also a refreshing variety — the tempos slow down as the mixtape draws to a close on “Nice to Know You” and “Stateside,” even incorporating a string arrangement (or at least a facsimile of one) on the closing “Romeo.” “Fancy That” delivers on all of PP’s promise, satiating while still leaving the listener wanting more.
Read the full article here
