Some of the most interesting pop music plays on a stark contrast between sound and content. Take, for instance, Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” which ironizes its dance-pop beats with deeply despondent lyrics. New Zealand siblings Georgia and Caleb Nott aim for a similar approach on Space Island, their fourth album as Broods, but instead of plumbing dance music for catharsis, they shroud emotional turmoil in blissed-out electronica.
The album’s sunny sound may evoke images of a beach vacation, but Space Island is primarily centered around singer Georgia’s recent divorce and subsequently slow and arduous recovery process. The broad strokes with which the album’s lyrics paint her heartache and healing render the songs, at times, distant and disconnected.
Space Island not only captures the melancholic calm of isolation, it also melds the astral synths of space ambient with the electroacoustic trappings of trop pop and chillwave. The opening tableau “Goodbye World, Hello Space Island” teases the album’s transportive spirit with lush and ethereal post-Odd Future neo-soul, before “Piece of My Mind” takes the album in a retrofuturistic electronic pop direction. The latter song’s concision and sparse lyrics blunt its underlying grief, leaning fully into its escapist themes. The same is true of the spacey and psychedelic “Heartbreak,” which is as optimistic (“Heartbreak gives an opportunity to get your feelings straight”) as it is blurry (“Feeling better now/Think I’ve found myself”).
While serenity and complexity aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, Space Island often feels underdeveloped as it languidly gestures toward heartbreak rather than truly engaging with it. It’s helpful, then, that the album’s lyrical ideas are often obvious, from the surface-level engagement with gender norms on “Like a Woman,” to the gauzy swirl of buzzwords on “Gaslight” and the literal description of alienation on “Alien.” These songs are all adeptly performed, capably produced, and awash in lush harmonies but almost euphemistic in the way that they divert their attention from the heart of the album’s narrative.
Space Island is most effective when it disrupts its pervasive chill to inspect the details of crumbling love. Like their earlier “Everytime You Go,” which was named one of Slant’s best songs of 2019, “Distance and Drugs” is rhythmically surprising, and its pleading, urgent use of repetition helps one-liners like “Boy, I don’t know this man” land smoothly.
Even more effective is the charming and tranquil “Days Are Passing,” which does more to draw out Georgia’s inner conflict than perhaps any other song on the album. The detached calmness with which she sings “Days are passing right through me” could just as easily signal her gradual healing or the type of depressive, disempowered apathy that’s so common to pandemic-era pop. The song’s subtle approach to chillwave proves that Broods can deliver genuinely clever pop music, but it also might make you wonder what the rest of Space Island could have sounded like if it were just as nuanced.
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