Grimes
Miss Anthropocene

There was great anticipation for the new album by the Canadian artist, arriving after a full 6 years. With her career starting in 2010, moving from the almost ambient and "reverberated" atmospheres of her beginnings, through electronic dream pop (also incorporating lessons from the Cocteau Twins), and refining the more overtly pop aspect, without abandoning the origins of the excellent "Art Angels," she had accustomed us to original albums of consistently high quality, which gave great hope for the future of the barely over thirty-year-old Claire Boucher, an all-round artist who handles production and video clips of her releases herself.
This time she returns with a concept album on global warming and enlists help from other producers like Dan Carey and her inseparable friend Hana. However, leaving aside the excellent work from a purely technical standpoint, the result is not what was hoped for. Let's say it right away: it is a barely sufficient album where she retraces her career to the point of sometimes seeming like a poor imitation of herself in some of the tracks ("New gods" and "Before the fever," for example). I say sometimes because we are talking about an album with ups and downs, half successful, with a part suffering from the aforementioned flaw and another with fairly successful pieces, among which "Violence" stands out qualitatively above the other compositions. Then remember that when playing with pop and catchiness, slipping into the clichéd or predictable is just a moment, even if you baroquely season it with guitar, electronic samples, and delay as it happens in "You'll miss me when I'm not around." It's a pity for the exclusion of the hit single "We appreciate power," presented as a preview and inexplicably included only in the Japanese edition. It would have raised the qualitative level of an album that nonetheless flows, but if I wanted to listen to one of her albums, I would undoubtedly choose from the previous ones.
As someone who has greatly appreciated her career so far, I am left slightly bitter, finding myself in front of one beautiful track, 3-4 nice ones, and the rest to avoid. It is for this reason that the rating should be seen as a 2 that wavers on a 3. Has she lost inspiration, transforming from an anti-capitalist to Elon Musk's girlfriend? Only time will tell the difficult verdict.