Sky Ferreira
As If!

There are newcomers, rookies, novices who manage to hit the top charts with their first album, sell loads of records, and churn out hits in abundance. However, there are others who, forced to wait months and years before releasing their musical debuts, fill these unspeakable time gaps by slowly releasing a few songs, timid mixtapes, and sporadic preliminary EPs with who knows what commercial fate. With the crisis of the music industry, declining revenues, records collecting dust on store shelves, and rampant piracy, the step-by-step initiation path has become the only viable solution to fully enter the unstable mainstream realm and major labels, which can, through the positive or negative reception of "apprenticeship" products, sense the smell of success and profit or disinterest and defeat. Moreover, considering the existence of such an elastic audience, picky ("choosy," to use an Anglophone expression à la Fornero), and capable of snubbing the latest productions of the most acclaimed artists on the market, record companies are now reluctant to make poor investments in characters who may be of high professional caliber but not well-suited for mass selling.

This is probably the fate of Sky Ferreira, a twenty-year-old from Los Angeles who, despite having a contract with Parlophone (the legendary Beatles’ golden alcove) and being framed by not at all unknown producers (just mention the famous Linda Perry, a first-class hitmaker for the best pop stars) on her team, is still waiting for her actual debut. Yet the beautiful young woman, not at all extravagant and bizarre like some colleagues forced to dress (in every sense) in the catalyzing attire of the pop vixen of the moment, has already fulfilled the now customary rites of pre-initiation into the music-biz, producing two delightful mini-albums: the first, As If!, was released in 2011, while the following Ghost is of very recent make and still needs to be absorbed by the most active sound area excavators. Both productions have already expressed the young performer’s general orientation, namely a carefree, simple, and fun pop tinged with electronics, dance (particularly in the first EP), and spiced with some not at all indigestible indie-rock hints. The choice to review As If!, much more mainstream and commercial compared to the indie-oriented Ghost responds to my irrepressible (and debatable) love for danceable and cheerful sounds; however, nothing prevents the reader from turning to the second choice, equally valid and tasty.

As If!, as just remarked, presents itself to the listener as a tiny organic corpus of glitch-dance sounds rich in references to the '80s synthpop, devoid nevertheless of all aesthetics, the patinas, and the usual surrounding glitter. Four pleasant tracks, simple and carefree: Sex Rules is the perfect anthem to the eighties funky disco-electropop in the refined style of Kylie Minogue, Haters Anonymous descends into a small techno-house delirium suited for all dancefloor-addicted, 99 Tears commemorates with commendable nostalgia the finely crafted europop. Finally, they follow suit with the heartbreaking synth-melodic ballad Traces and the appetizing, robotic, and almost childlike 108.

Will the beautiful Sky Ferreira finally (and definitively) win over her cautious major label with the haughty nose, carve out a niche in the overly crowded pop living room and redeem a genre, electronics, from the terrible and abhorrent pollution of recent years? To the future generations (but not too distant) the arduous sentence, with the hope of seeing her as a servant and heir of the Legends in the mainstream constellation.

Sky Ferreira, As If!

Sex Rules - Traces - Haters Anonymous - 99 Tears - 108