The Previous and Future discs will enchantment on to PC heads, with few huge surprises. Even at peak depth—the speedrun end of “Prismatic,” the stressed mechanics of “Luddite Manufacturing unit Operator”—Prepare dinner’s surfaces are varnished, his constructions each easy and complicated. There’s not one of the naivety or pleasingly “unsuitable” tilt of these exceptional early productions, like GFOTY’s “Bobby” or Hannah Diamond’s “Pink and Blue.” That is the work of an completed, L.A.-facing pop producer. When Charli enters the room—as she additionally does on “Lucifer,” a catchy, moody-girl spotlight additionally that includes Addison Rae—the scene comes alive, whereas the tracks that relaxation on ultra-processed, unintelligible vocals, just like the Balearic “Crescent Solar,” tackle the weightless high quality of a hologram.
Which is why the Current disc, the place Prepare dinner takes the mic, is the shock standout of the three. Choosing up the place Apple left off, these eight songs additionally take their cue from Thy Slaughter’s Comfortable Rock—Prepare dinner’s witty collaboration with PC Music oldtimer easyFun—to drive deeper into digitally enhanced fuzz rock. Infused with the wistful melancholy that British comic Invoice Bailey as soon as recognized in his countryfolk (as a result of “52 p.c of our days are overcast”) the Current disc falls someplace between cultish bedroom-punk (The Durutti Column, Felt) and scratchy ’90s indie (Teenage Fanclub, the Breeders, late ’90s Blur)—and delivers some candy, candy guitar tones in addition. Our troubadour will get near the mic, utilizing phone results and Auto-Tune to spice up the grain of his far-from-powerful voice, whereas the guitars do quiet-quiet-LOUD grunge dynamics (“Inexperienced Man,” “Tremendously”) and wailing mini-solos (“Good to Meet You”). Most addictive is “Bewitched,” an egg punk anthem for the kids of Weezer and Ash, iced with an ideal hook (“I heard her say, Abra-abracadabra”) that echoes an oldie by Ian Dury.
Buried contained in the lyrics is a way of distance and loss, from the awkwardly British (“I’ll miss you significantly”) to the open wound of “With out,” a tribute to his artistic twin flame SOPHIE, who died in 2021: “An vacancy, a silhouette/I by no means guessed the loudest sounds are hole.” Prepare dinner has spent the previous few years dwelling in America, together with a lockdown in rural Montana, house to his girlfriend, the singer Alaska Reid. Feeling like a foreigner inevitably made him extra conscious of his Britishness, and seemingly extra wanting to play it up—therefore the enduring Beatles mop-top. Rather than the playful meta-ironies and business sheen of the PC Music world, Prepare dinner aligns himself with fable and magic (“Inexperienced Man,” “Crone,” “Bewitched”), stocking his lyrics with an apothecary’s value of amulets, manuscripts, gargoyles, “skulls on the shelf” and “membranes stacked within the catacombs.”