Album Review: NOAHFINNCE - 'GROWING UP ON THE INTERNET'
Fresh off of touring arenas with Enter Shikari, Noahfinnce has finally released his debut album ‘GROWING UP ON THE INTERNET’ — and it’s as colourful and chaotic as you’d want.
Noahfinnce has had one hell of a journey. Watching him go from a YouTuber posting covers, signing a record deal post-Covid, and playing a string of shows and festival appearances, to touring the UK and Ireland back in October, playing a host of UK arenas as the opener for Enter Shikari, and now, on the doorstep of his third headline tour of America, releasing his debut album? Wild, but well deserved. And said debut album proves that.
Each song seems to stem from a different segment of psyche; even the change between the darkly menacing opener ‘KINDA LOVE IT’, with its prevalent bass riffs, wailing sirens, and sense of barely simmering anger, to second song and title track ‘GROWING UP ON THE INTERNET’, with its ‘Danger Days’-esque opener and the unmistakable sound of dial-up internet leading into the frantic, anxious fury born of a 16 year old messed up from what the internet exposes minors to — like a 35 year old getting a tattoo of 16 year old Noah on his leg — is one hell of a tonal shift. And that’s just the two songs. There’s the poppy ‘3 DAY HEADACHE’, straight out of the chilled out pop-punk handbook, all about burn out and exhaustion; the crazed, panicked self-destruction of ‘I KNOW BETTER’; ‘ALEXITHYMIA’, with a painfully relatable yet surrealist exploration of mental health diagnoses; the surprisingly emotional ‘SUBTITLES’, full of self-doubt and the claustrophic need to escape; the brief, surprisingly upbeat, crypto-bro hating ‘RISE AND GRIND’; the electronic, trap-rap influenced ‘GIBBERISH’, an album closer that serves to reinforce the need for individuality, and fighting against the voice in the back of your mind that tells you you’re wanted. Each track is fantastic in its own right, even if the album begins to feel at times like a collection of singles rather than one cohesive whole. But, of course, it’s not just those few.
It feels wrong to tie Noah’s debut album to his identity as trans. His music is so much more, however, it is still part of his identity — and one fantastically explored in the duo of ‘SCUMBAG’ and ‘LOVELY LADIES’. Both feel incredibly, depressingly necessary in this political landscape; the former, an acerbic anthem against transphobes that ‘hide their hatred of trans people behind the guise of protecting women and children’ is a track ready made to be screamed in arenas. In fact, it has been — with quite a memorable stage show, actually, featuring an actress on stage playing a certain child wizard from a certain book series from an author quite out spoken with their views. The blazing, furious, frenzied sound of ‘LOVELY LADIES’, meanwhile, seems to occupy the other side of that coin — rather than raging against and inhibiting ideologies and views, it instead inhabits them: his “bit scary trans villain” moment. Both tracks rail against the idea of an ‘epidemic of trans people’ that seems to get peddled in some sections of mainstream media, and are, for want of a better word, vital. They might not change any minds, but even just their existence in media challenges discourse and volunteers discussion, and what could be better?
In an album that drives listeners on a crazed go-kart ride of Noah’s mind — his trauma and troubles, his facade-covered fury and his frenzied fun, and his gradually solidifying sense of self-acceptance — Noahfinnce manages to keep songs feeling fresh and relatable, even for subjects that mainstream media often tries to sweep under the rug. A brilliant debut album, from one of the UK rock scene’s fastest growing stars — and, although a UK tour might not be immediately forthcoming, you can still catch him at Brighton’s The Great Escape or Donnington’s Download.
Words by James O’Sullivan
