while her last two singles came across as intensely emotive refinements of some of her deeper past hits (à la Like a Kiss demo v4), her latest here rends and adds together everything she's done so far—her style reinventions have gone full circle; maybe not again, but for the first time with this much raw intent.
with interpolative nods to Bob Dylan ('see that my grave is kept clean', two white horses...) there's this calculated explosion, a violence in empathy with a past self; the screams at its buzzing instrumental's change-up and prominent homeswitcher sample tie that all up rather clearly.
but what makes this her best of the past three singles isn't simply that it mixes that all into what is likely the most inventive blend of rage and digicore ever, it's that there's so much heart to it. in connecting death and change through white horses as a self-destructive pestilence, transitioning and moving on from a time she both wants to sever from and preserve or reclaim (see reviving and marketing her venturing project and releasing Grave Robbing as well), the sympathy she sometimes feels for her old fans despite the hell it seems to stir within her, disconnecting and moving away from her old collaborators while still riding for them, considering another name change but realizing that just cycles back in on itself, her past... it's genuinely astounding to pack so much motive and meaning into this brutal, overbearing sound. yet it isn't loud and mushy for its own sake—in fact, every single sputtering, carefully placed sound here is mixed perfectly; there's nothing lost in the frenzy, and the conflicts being excised are never too foggy.
and it still lightens up by the end; there's still a soft glimmer after the inferno, when her concern for herself reaches some kind of guarded brink, of realizing there is more to uncover, that there's still a reaching hope to move on and flourish without going full circle again.
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