Empress Of - Us

Empress Of
Us
2018
Spotify

Empress of has always felt like she was floating above the rest of the crowd in R&B and Pop. Her debut album Me was so strange and off the wall that it made you fall instantly in love with it. It refused to be boxed in and was setting trends before we even knew they would be that. A stellar feature on Dev Hyne's "Best to You" solidified her ability to set a song soaring. Lorely Rodriguez felt like she was always going against the grain, but on this new album it seems like she is falling in line more than ever before. The first two songs lack that wild diversity that has become a hallmark of her music. and feel more like a summation of where pop music currently is. The first Spanish we get comes on "Trust Me Baby" and it is one of the best things that she does. When Rodriguez sings in Spanish it has this vibe that is so different than any other Spanish language singers.  "Love For Me" has this great potential and just when you think it is going to shift into something really incredible, it just sort of bops along with little more than a whimper. That is the thing you keep noticing track after track: there is massive potential at the start but Empress Of never capitalizes. So many songs just sort of fade out or miss the big moments and the album suffers because of it. "I Don't Smoke Weed" is similar in that this electronic inspired track begins like it might actually take you somewhere, but then ends up being almost annoyingly one note.

On "Timberlands" she sounds like she is almost taking a brat pop kind of stance, but when she goes into the melodic parts she doesn't depart from the bleep blop that bases the song. The whole record feels like it's just a couple notches behind her potential throughout. "All for Nothing" spills into the far more evocative "When I'm With Him", but the transition is clunky making the two tracks loose a little bit of themselves in the process. The choices just feel odd on this record. The decision to exclude anything upbeat is so strange and the closer "Again" ends the album with a total sigh. Empress Of doesn't always feel engaged on this record, and it comes across as something that had to be done rather than something she wanted to do. We've hear her voice be transcendent and bring a track to crazy new heights, but on this record she just fades into the background. The sophomore curse is one that we never seem to escape and the same can be said here. She will bring it around, but for now we'll have to enjoy the few good tracks here. The very few.

5.0 out of 10