Album Review: Eartheater Kicks Off Sad Girl Autumn with Latest Record ‘Powders’
Eartheater melds trip-hop beats with baroque instrumentals to create her most sonically arresting, yet thematically lacking, album yet.
Written by C.S. Harper
Photo courtesy of Hannah Khymych
Content warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.
Rising among the ranks of PC Music affiliated artists like Shygirl and Coucou Chloe, Alexandra Drewchin has made a name for herself as a multitalented singer and producer. Better known as Eartheater, the alternative darling has been perfecting her experimental take on pop since her debut in 2015 with Metalepsis. Since then, her sound has evolved with each record, refusing to stay within the confines of a single genre. In Trinity, she takes the “crying on the dance floor” concept to the next level by making an entire mixtape of melancholy deconstructed club tracks; in Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin, she adds hints of classical to her avant-pop framework. In latest album Powders, she creates a sonic tapestry that flawlessly amalgamates her previous records’ instrumental elements, this time adding hints of trip-hop.
Sharing in a Crack Magazine cover story that Powders’ production is “more intimate, a completely new sound” that “[plays] with nostalgia,” Drewchin also notes that the record has “some of the best lyrics I’ve ever written.” Like her previous records, Powders is a concept album that explores the process of metamorphosis. But whereas Trinity’s exploration of the three states of matter and Phoenix’s theme of rebirth existed separately from each other, Powders operates in relation to a record that hasn’t yet been released. Its sister album, Aftermath, is due to come out in six months, making Powders the autumnal counterpart. But because of this record’s reliance on Aftermath to tell the full story, Powders feels half-baked, doing a disservice to its sonic excellence with a poorly developed narrative.
Beginning with ominous violins, Powders starts off Drewchin’s entry into the metaphorical chrysalis in a dark tone. “Broke her down / Sugarcane switch came,” the sirenic songstress wails. Rapid-fire electronic drums emerge into the mix as the singer-producer follows up with more cryptic verses in her signature falsetto: “Snatch the switch / It’s now obsolete / We ground it down / Into something sweet.” The classical instrumental dissipates for a brief trip-hop intermission before transitioning seamlessly into “Crushing.” One of her most ethereal tracks yet, “Crushing” pairs violins and synths with jazzy drumming to create a peaceful ambience. Even though her love interest in the track is “a priceless kind of guy,” Drewchin expresses hesitation in the relationship: “You’re a well of reasons to keep crashing / To keep crushing on your shore / But I’m still not quite sure.” The song’s accompanying music video taps into Drewchin’s ‘90s influences on the record with imagery reminiscent of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, featuring the singer drinking a glass of dice and shattering it with her voice.
Image courtesy of Andrew Thomas Huang
Like the music of one of Drewchin’s early inspirations, Cocteau Twins, her work is mostly aesthetic, with indecipherable lyrics meant to draw more attention to the ambience of her sound. Co-produced by Yves Rothman of Yves Tumor, “Face in the Moon” is no exception to this rule. The track switches things up with its acoustic guitar-driven melody, building up a wall of sound complete with flute-like synths and heavy drumming toward the end. Featuring themes of empowerment and freedom, the track sees Drewchin contemplating her multifaceted existence on the eve of her transformation: “Two different / Natures are pulling at me.” The following song, “Clean Break,” appropriately features some of the cleanest mixing and vocals on the record, with whimsical orchestral stylings and a Dummy-era Portishead type beat. “How concerto of me to not see,” Drewchin muses, cheekily sliding in a reference to her classical origins.
Drewchin drops her electronic stylings in favor of simple acoustics in her version of System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” Although the cover may seem unexpected to many Eartheater fans, the song is a testament to her versatility as an artist and her early metal and hardcore influences. Despite its simplicity, the track is no less grandiose than the previous songs, with a breathtaking piano-led outro as Drewchin sings, “I cry when angels deserve to die.” The singer-songwriter’s more melancholic, folksy approach to the song is fitting considering its sobering critique of how people judge others’ suicide differently depending on how they died.
The next two tracks offer an abrupt change in tone, focusing on love and sexuality, to showcase the duality of Drewchin’s psyche. Over disparate synths and electric guitars in “Heels over Head,” the songstress asks her lover, “Whatcha gonna do when I come for you / Like you came for me?” In “Mona Lisa Moan,” Mugler’s muse aptly compares herself to a painting, but not because of her fashion icon status — rather, she shows frustration at her love interest’s reluctance to touch her as if she were a work of art hung in a museum. She dares them to “Come make Mona Lisa moan / Kiss the painting,” reaching the higher range of her multi-octave vocal capacity as she revels in her sensuality.
Image courtesy of Chemical X/Mad Decent
The penultimate track and first single off the album, “Pure Smile Snake Venom,” Drewchin continues expressing her dualities over a Sega Bodega-produced instrumental. “Gonna bare these fangs / Gonna flash these pearly whites / ‘Cause I like you,” the Queens-based singer croons, indicating she simultaneously wants to intimidate and attract her love interest. In the chorus, Drewchin declares her contradictory feelings toward love with the lines “I choose not to bite you / In spite of my venom welling up … / So I bare my fangs.” Although her lover causes a fire to build up inside of her, she chooses not to hurt them and forgives them instead. The track’s accompanying music video features Drewchin thrashing around on a pole and in murky water, highlighting the frustration that comes with inhibiting your true feelings about someone.
The closing song, “Salt of the Earth (H2ome),” is an ode to the singer’s origins. Featuring Silas Drewchin on the guitar and a violinist simply credited as “Mom,” the singer-songwriter and her family members come together to produce a tender track about returning home. Accompanied almost exclusively by acoustic instrumentation, she pleads in a breathy falsetto, “H2O, please come home … / Come home to the body.” Ending the album with the line, “The salt is stinging,” Drewchin indicates that the tumultuousness of her existence is far from over, opening a portal into Aftermath as the spacey ambience of the instrumental dies down.
Though pretty on the surface, Powders is a missed opportunity. Although Drewchin’s Cocteau Twins-esque lyricism creates a hazy aura, it does her few favors in creating a cohesive narrative. The abrupt tonal changes across the record are whiplash-inducing: discussing grim topics like suicide in one song (“Chop Suey”) and jumping to sexuality in the next (“Head Over Heels” and “Mona Lisa Moan”) admittedly feels a bit crass. As such, Powders feels more like a collection of vignettes than an actual concept album. Even though her previous albums were also mostly aesthetically driven, they felt more unified due to their shared thematic content across the tracklist. In contrast, the songs in Powders feel disjointed, even with the cohesion of trip-hop and orchestral elements throughout.
As a result, the record feels more like a bridge between Drewchin’s past work and what’s to come than a fully fleshed out narrative of its own. Despite its immaculate production, Powders leaves much to be desired in terms of its lyricism. Here’s hoping Aftermath offers more of Eartheater’s sonic genius — this time with more thought put into its lyrical content.