Robyn ‘Sexistential’ Review: Maturing Never Sounded So Fun

On her first studio album in eight years, Robyn proves that she’s still capable of transposing the most overwhelming emotional experiences into dizzying dance-pop ecstasy, and she does so with a signature playfulness and brazenness. Sexistential sees her reprising the sensual sci-fi production of 2010’s Body Talk, making the tricky business of maturing into middle age feel almost intergalactic.

The pulsating opening track, “Really Real,” interrogates the fallout of a long-term relationship before a shredding electric guitar line and some R2-D2-esque blips and bloops underscore that Robyn and her ex are “splitting up reality.” Elsewhere, the shimmering “Dopamine” harnesses an arpeggiated bassline and a charging kick drum to evoke the titular hormone, as Robyn downplays—and then embraces—the neurochemical process behind her high.

Largely sticking to the tried-and-true formula of pairing her impassioned voice with longtime producer Klas Åhlund’s retrofuturistic dancehall soundscapes, Sexistential doesn’t reinvent the wheel so much as reaffirm how Robyn keeps it spinning so smoothly. Part of that may be because this is an album that’s been decades in the making: The lightly tropical “Sucker for Love” was originally penned with Röyksopp for 2014’s Do It Again EP, and “Blow My Mind” is a vaporwave reimagining of a track from Robyn’s 2002 album Don’t Stop the Music, now envisioned as a wry but loving tribute to her three-year-old son.

Robyn’s last album, 2018’s Honey, was a relatively subdued foray into the type of dreamy house music you might hear at an after-after-party. It signaled that she might be hanging up her dancing shoes and following in her pop forebearers’ footsteps into more “mature,” albeit experimental, club music. But her idea of maturation isn’t to go calmly into the night, but rather to crash-land onto the dance floor.

This is made manifest on closer “Into the Sun,” which envisions Robyn trying to find her way back home after being lost in space. The electrofunk track could also easily be interpreted as an emphatic assertion of the singer’s place in the pop landscape, as she croons over a thundering sub-bass, “Let me in, let me finish what I begun.”

While Sexistential tracks how certain biographical developments, such as Robyn becoming a mother, expand her perspectives on intimacy and existence, the paradox at the album’s center is that settling into middle age doesn’t necessarily mean slowing down—not in terms of one’s sex drive (“Talk to Me”) or big feelings (“It Don’t Mean a Thing”). And certainly not in terms of BPMs.

What keeps all this from feeling regressive is Robyn’s sense of humor—best reflected in the title track. Over synth stabs and groaning pitch shifters, Robyn describes how her “babymaker’s got 20 in the clip” and, despite spending her days breastfeeding and Etsy shopping, she still likes to “go out, wear something nice, and push.” The song’s goofy spiritedness, which abounds in less potent doses throughout the album, charms more than it repels.

Sexistential is littered with multi-language spoken-word asides, text-lingo initialisms that suggest Robyn still communicates via Motorola Razr, and a no-fucks-given attitude knowingly betrayed by a guileless voice that very much gives a fuck about everything. None of these read as especially cool in a youth-centered culture that decries earnest expression. But while the last couple of years have seen Katy Perry trying to resurrect pussyhat feminism and Taylor Swift dubiously invoking the term “dickmatize,” Robyn’s eager Gen X plunge into glorious capital-C cringe feels less like an attempt to stay hip than a cheeky disregard for sticking to anyone’s timeline—or artistic vision—but her own.