Your Number Is Up

Sky Ferreira “Red Lips”

The last time I wrote about Sky Ferreira here, she was aiming for an icy electro-pop sound with a song that cut up an unaffected vocal line into a mechanical abstraction – romantic obsession rendered as a skipping CD loop. This time around she’s going for 90s alt rock, or to be really specific, a Garbage pastiche. It suits her well: She’s very good at conveying that sort of sullen sexuality, and in spiking her most venomous lines with a bit of pop sugar. The bass and guitar sound nail the aesthetics of the era better than pretty much every faux-90s band I’ve heard in the past year – blunt and violent without obscuring some very catchy hooks. This is likely a bit of bandwagon jumping on Ferreira’s part – she seems to be the kind of young pop singer who ends up casting about for a direction until one sticks – but it suits her extremely well, and better yet, isn’t such a drastic change from her previous singles. I definitely hear echoes of the same person in both “Red Lips” and “One,” and am interested to hear other angles on that persona in other songs.

Buy it from iTunes.