There’s a thread of desperation here that’s in tension with B0YG1RL’s no-holds-barred thrillseeking. “Hope you touch me, I hope you feel so entitled,” Vinette pleads over the prickly synthplay of “Show Me,” so wrapped up in desire that he sounds exasperated. “Reality” and “Angel” are the album’s dramatic bookends, playing with synths loud enough to knock Anthony Gonzalez upside the head. “I saw an angel/And it hurt,” Vinette cries on the latter, and I believe him. With help from producers like prblm, Trauma, amne, and DJ Travella, B0YG1RL feels like the work of two twentysomethings soundtracking their glitzy new lives in real time, less focused on finding direction than they are with sensationalizing their biggest, harshest feelings.
To the album’s detriment, the near-incessant shifts in pace, tone, and texture make their lack of a crystallized vision too noticeable. “Follow Me,” an enjoyably cybernetic piece of cumbia, feels like an assertion of versatility rather than a cohesive addition to the whole. Pure impulse and adrenaline have taken B0YG1RL this far, and it’s paid off, but it’s frustrating when some potentially great moments don’t get space to breathe. Smack in the middle of a wavy jackzebra feature on “TV,” the icy, contemplative standout is broken up by a cheesy festival EDM build. The slinky baile funk of “V-I-N-E-T-T-E” slips in a dated trap beat that reminds me too much of 2017.
Up until the more self-effacing, melancholic suite at the end (I love the beautifully squelching pop-rock of “Gazée”; its punchy drumbeat and playful hook brings me back to hearing P!NK on the radio), this record jumps around a bit too much for its own good. Does that make any of B0YG1RL’s peaks any less exciting? Hell nah. Let someone play the deathly fierce rhythms of “Mond Lan Fini” at a function with enough Cutwater and I might headbutt an SUV.
