Album Review: underscores - 'U'
With 2023’s Wallsocket, April Harper Grey, better known as the hyperpop superstar underscores, offered us a sprawling, multi-media folk-punk odyssey that felt as wide and dusty as the fictional town it inhabited. However, her third and latest record, U, suggests that once you’ve built a world, the only thing left to do is burn it down and wander around what is left, which in this case, is pure magic.
The sonic landscape of U is perhaps Grey’s most forward-thinking to date, yet it feels effortless. The record was built in the Mall of America, the largest shopping center in the United States. There, Grey spent days wandering its consumer-centered corridors, absorbing the liminal energy of a space designed to be everything and nothing at once. Grey herself has described it as the soundtrack to an "iPhone spy movie," and “designed for malls, airports, and supermarkets.”
It is an album, titled after her artistic name, that analyzes the relationship between the U and I. On the opening track, "Tell Me (U Want It)," we immediately enter a world of lust and recklessness in which she confesses: “I guess I’m that type of person: I get what I want and then find out right after I get it, I don’t even want it.” Shifting from the full blown-out chaos of her past music, she is now opting for more slick and controlled drops. "The Peace" is a stripped-back track which takes on a smoking journey from Brooklyn to Coachella and ultimately Europe, in which she sings to a friend: “I couldn’t escape the vibe sleeping on the couch / It’s always been like this and it might be forever / We took a hit outside together.”
The production doesn't just support the lyrics; it enacts them, shifting from the nostalgia of "Music," in which she describes a partner as every genre of music and admits how she “just can’t stand when people talk like they’re a therapist / But your words sound like they come from God, I can’t compare to it,” to the club-ready glitch of "Innuendo (I Get U)," which is bound to make you move.
The album’s strongest moment is difficult to pinpoint considering that every song is so meticulously crafted, but "Lovefield" might take it. More than just a ballad, it is the most heartbreaking moment in the tracklist. In a melody reminiscent of Imogen Heap’s early records, she sings: “It hurts for me to wait on U / I bet you’re waiting on me too / Always almost never ever / Wish I could get it but I can’t / I can’t, you’re just outside the Lovefield.” It is undoubtedly a career highlight, and one of the best releases of the year so far.
This emotional moment leads into the high of "Do It," which features what is arguably Grey’s most irresistible pop chorus to date. Dropped as the last single before the release of the record, alongside a self-directed music video, it is a banger in which she warns a love interest about her lifestyle while debating if they might be good for her, and viceversa: “If you don’t know me, and I don’t know you / Then this might be something we should do / It’s all on the line for me, you could ruin everything / Or you could make me somebody new… U!”
The record concludes with the pop-heavy “Bodyfeeling” and the haunting "Wish U Well." It is a finale that feels purposefully anticlimactic, but somehow it works. “This ain’t what I had imagined / That’s just how it happened,” Grey sings, acknowledging the gap between the thrill of the chase and the stillness of the aftermath. It offers some of the most vulnerable lyrics she’s ever written: “And if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t want closure / I want to feel the gravity of losing you / And if I’m being honest with myself, the feeling’s over / My worst nightmare coming true…”. It is a quiet conclusion that feels like the ending of a film when the credits roll and you’re left sitting in the dark all by yourself.
U is underscores’ strongest project to date, proving her ability to create sonic landscapes. By turning the lens inward and toward the "U" that haunts her, which is mostly just her, she has created a record that feels singular; a new bible of modern pop. It is a concise, fun, but gut-wrenching album that will stay in your head for a long time.
Words by Marcos Sanoja
