Our first brush with the third studio album by the eternally up-and-coming pop genius Slayyyter is a blistering checklist of hedonistic excesses: “Money, drugs, chains on my chest, that vintage Celine / Diamond grills, champagne bottles, swagger I bleed,” she sings on lead single ‘Beat Up Chanel$’. It’s a state of mind for the fast-living, blunt-carrying, self-destructive narrator. “I want a cigarette,” she squeals at last, before the track lurches into a splendorous clash of thumping electro house, peppered with screwed synthesisers and all. This is the ‘Wor$t Girl In America’, take her or leave her.
Charting a chameleonic shift from the noisy proto-popstar of her self-titled debut, to the sultry, ’80s-noir of ‘Starfucker’, Slayyyter returns to the saddle on album three with her take on the lurid world of late-noughties indie sleaze (which she affectionately terms “iPod music”). Here, she indulges in clichés of American life as depicted on screen by her favourite auteurs, from drugged-up trailer trash (Spun) to deprived misfits (Gummo) and even homicidal showgirls (Faster Pussy Cat, Kill Kill!). Inspiration from the latter manifests in the spooky sonics of ‘Cannibalism’, a new-wave bop led by a lusty, cooing chorus that undulates between screamo-pop and the bravado of a tragic, on-screen heroine.
At the beating heart of the project’s explosive and utterly delirious sound lies ‘Crank’, a salacious, screaming techno track with shudders of industrial rip-roars that features some of this year’s best lyrical offerings. Lines like “She pick up then we fuck, I get so gay off that Tequila” and “He wanna fuck Slayyyter, Richard, we should link later” (the latter followed by a gallant Matthew McConnaughey impression) play to the singer’s historically cheeky pen, toeing the line between the project’s playful, rage-fuelled spirit.
These sonic experiments continue in flirtations with dark wave (‘Gas Station’), twinkling synthpop (‘Unknown Loverz’) and even religious sermon (‘Prayer’). But paramount to all of this is a note of club-led salvation, nowhere more so than on album opener ‘Dance…’, which charts a slinky new territory for the artist as she edges on the precipice of come-up with doses of acidic Korg basslines and slow-burning electro clash. Slayyyter fashions a similar patchwork of influences in the album’s self-directed music videos too, visually feasting on fireworks, rodeos, flickering cityscapes, derelict backyards and a trip to Prada Marfa, as if she was surfing through her own Tumblr feed.
The album concludes with an ode to the incomparable Brittany Murphy, the star of Jonas Akurland’s aforementioned Spun, which the singer has cited as a significant reference for the project. Synonymous with girlhood at its most challenging and delirious, Murphy couldn’t be a more fitting subject as archetype for the album’s final girl. Giggling through the chaos of the past 13 tracks as psychedelic dream-pop fills in the gaps, we can’t help but give in to the cinematic peak of ‘Wor$t Girl In America’, touching us the way all good movies do.
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