After co-headlining with Charli xcx at the peak of Brat Summer, Sivan was struck by his post-show emotional crash, when the roar of stadiums gave way to the quiet of being totally on his own. And so the record is divided between tracks that capture the rush of losing yourself in a sea of bodies and the pain of being caught out at last call with no one to return home to. On “Canada Dry,” Sivan is in a pure flow state, taking a house beat by storm and layering his voice so that its breathy highs and handsome lower register convincingly sells the song’s horny, corny wish (“I wanna sip your body till it’s Canada Dry”) from both ends. It makes for an interesting pair with “I Do This for You,” which heightens the boasting (“Surely can admit, I’m rich, big dick, the shit, I’m it”) as the house synths grow even more brassy and unconvincing. When the beat gives way in the third act, his bravado cuts out too, and Sivan unfurls a bleary-eyed banner advertisement that cements how alone he truly is, singing out the slogan: “Find hot singles in the Los Angeles area.”
This juxtaposition is interesting, but it should carry more impact. Sivan is good at evoking loneliness through imagery, but not always the best at inhabiting it. On a record dedicated to pursuing the vague idea of a person, he mostly approaches the object of his desire at an artsy remove. Consider the elusive “she,” after whom Sivan titles the record and subsequently abandons following the opening song. Over a shuffling beat, he uses his deadpan Aussie drawl to salute a self-possessed party girl who can turn a walk of shame into a runway, sashaying across the city with “a little thin cigarette/Great smile, and a cum stain on her dress.” Despite claiming “she’s the heartbeat bumping in my chest,” Sivan’s identification with her isn’t clear because he’s staked so little of himself on the relationship. “She” is both every woman and nobody in particular, a bundle of free-spirited signifiers stuffed into a bandage dress and fitted with a pronoun. The song makes clear that while Jake Shane might not be this generation’s Truman Capote, Troye Sivan certainly isn’t either.
