Pop music has always been an interesting part of our culture. Anytime an artist like Taylor Swift releases a project, the whole world seems to have an opinion. What is seldom talked about in our culture, is the experimental releases in pop. Artist April Gray Harper (or underscores) is an artist who has always twisted pop music to however she sees fit. Her style of distorted pop music sees its climax with her release this year Wallsocket. 

She released a few different singles for this album, the first of which being “Cops and robbers”. The song sees the protagonist discussing how they intend to steal money from the local bank they work at. It is made immediately apparent that across this record, she is singing from the perspective of different characters. She uses this format to tell a fictional story about three local girls struggling to grow up in the fictional town of Wallsocket, Michigan. These girls, named S*nny, Mara, and Sarah, all have their own struggles that eventually lead to them leaving the town at the end of the record.

After “Cops and robbers”, we properly meet these three girls in the next song “Locals (Girls like us)” featuring musician gabby start. This song combines electronic pop stylings with powerful group vocals to create one of the most entertaining songs I’ve heard all year. The group vocals during the chorus of the song make for what could be the catchiest song on the entire project. Eventually, we get to “You don’t even know who I am”, a song that features only a bass guitar, some light synth work, and a harmonica alongside the standard vocals from April. The atmosphere in this song is much more upsetting with Mara singing about how she wishes her life was like S*nny’s despite S*nny having a rough upbringing. Later on, we get to “Shoot to kill, kill your darlings” which is sung by Sarah. This is a chill song with subtle electronic interjections about how her friend is enlisting in the military and how scary that is for her. She worries that her friend won’t survive being in a foreign nation and wishes that he would find a simpler way to live his life. Sarah, despite being worried about this, is mostly unaffected by the news. 

This leads to what I would consider the second act of the project. “Horror movie soundtrack” is about Sarah’s apathetic attitude toward life. This leads to her believing that her life might not be worth continuing to live. This is the emotional climax of the album, especially with how full of despair the instrumentation sounds, just being a simple acoustic guitar with string interjections at the end with April repeating “You won’t get away with this”. A few tracks later, we get to “Seventyseven dog years”. This is a more lowkey cut about how S*nny’s life was affected by her dad robbing the bank during “Cops and robbers”. This conversation between S*nny and Mara leads Mara to get very close to the person she has been stalking all these years. This leads to one of the best moments on the entire record, “Uncanny long arms” featuring up-and-coming shoegaze artist Jane Remover. This track uses roaring guitars and passionate vocals to describe how Mara feels about being so close to S*nny. The realization that she may have an influence on the life of the person she had been watching for so long scared her. Finally, we reach the closer of this nearly hour-long record, “Good luck final girl”. This song is probably my favorite on the project just utilizing an acoustic guitar and soft-spoken vocals. This song sees our three main characters all leaving Wallsocket for their own reason.  Mara discusses her love of money, S*nny talks about her want to escape Mara, and Sarah leaves because of the death of her friend from the military. The final lines of the album are quite powerful, simply being “No one’s gonna do your job for you, after all, that’s not how this thing works”.

Overall, I think Wallsocket is one of the most impressive pop albums to come out in the past decade. The narrative is dark at times, but very impactful. Even without the narrative in mind, Wallsocket manages to produce some of the most entertaining pop music I’ve ever heard. This was my most anticipated release of the entire year and I can safely say it was worth the hype. I would rate this album a 10/10 with my favorite tracks being “Geez louise”, “Uncanny long arms” and “Good luck final girl”.