April Harper Grey, better known as underscores, has a history of obsessing over musical perfection. Having produced music since she was 12 years old, she began her music career posting dubstep on SoundCloud, citing Skrillex as a major source of inspiration. She blew up upon the release of her first album, fishmonger, which appeared on The Atlantic’s top 10 best albums of 2021 and even caught the attention of Blink-182’s Travis Barker. Her second album, Wallsocket, an eclectic hyperpop, dubstep, pop-punk journey, was released with an Alternate Reality Game involving an intricate story about a fictional town, Wallsocket, Michigan. This project was also released to critical acclaim. The album was meticulously crafted, as can be seen in her lengthy livestreams explaining the production of the album.
Her most recent album, U, released March 20, marks a new era in her musical career, both in terms of a sonic pivot towards a more traditional 2010s pop style, and in terms of her attitude towards the music she creates. She aims for her new music to be more “brain off” than her previous albums, which she cites as “way too intentional.” As such, U trades the conceptual heights of Wallsocket for pure fun. The result is an album which takes you back to the pop and dubstep of the early 2010s, while never feeling played out or cliché over the course of its 34-minute runtime. She has mentioned being “inspired by the synthetic gloss of airports, hotels and shopping malls,” using this album to create music that is intended for and represents these liminal spaces. This inspiration manifests in the familiar and nostalgic feelings evoked by the album, with at times melancholic themes. While there is a noticeable reduction from her previous work in terms of diversity of sound and genre, she is still highly experimental in the more classic hyperpop space that the album inhabits. U is a pounding euphoric soundscape filled with powerful imagery that pushes the boundaries of the genre.
The production of U is often similarly maximalist to her previous albums, with a more traditional 2010s dubstep library of sounds. Her Skrillex inspiration is perhaps most clear on the tracks “Music” and “Hollywood Forever,” two highlights of the album. “Music” reads as a love song to music itself, featuring light vocals over a beat carried by a pulsing dubstep kick as Grey tells us that “Last night, I had a wet dream ‘bout the perfect song.” The production on “Hollywood Forever” feels similarly classic, including a drop with pounding wubs and a powerful kick that takes me back to listening to dubstep 10 years ago on an audio visualizer YouTube channel.
While Wallsocket as a concept album aimed to create a vivid story over the course of the album, the stories told on U are more episodic. Throughout U, Grey discusses her newfound fame and seeking connection to others. Narratively, the album feels as nostalgic as the sound itself. It creates strong emotional beats by finding the profundity in simple imagery akin to Car Seat Headrest and Sufjan Stevens, the latter of whom she has previously cited as an inspiration. This storytelling shines on her songs with more room to breathe and more laidback production. Two such songs are “The Peace,” where Grey’s vocals dance over the floaty drumless beat, and “Lovefield,” a heartbreaking song about an unrequited love. These emotional ballads paint pictures of fleeting relationships by creating simple yet emotionally powerful moments. This takes the form of reminiscing on the various times and places that she’s been when she smoked with a situationship in “The Peace.” “Lovefield” paints a picture of a partner she’s losing that is just outside of a “lovefield,” where “Every time I hang with you / We don't know what we're supposed to do / God, is this forever ever?”
My favorite track on the album is the closing song, “Wish U Well,” with its devastating lyrics building to a long and cathartic drop. The beat is littered with 8-bit sounds from the start as Grey watches her ex at a distance, talking about how they’ve changed. She is wittingly sharp, remarking about a new partner that “She looks just like me / In a way, it's beautiful / I'm wherever you go.” Her lightly filtered vocals sit nicely under a similarly trancelike plucked guitar playing over a dynamic and stuttering midi-drum beat. After lamenting over the fact that “I can’t go back to you and I know it,” she comes to terms with having lost her partner with my favorite lyric on the album, “And if I'm being honest with myself, I don't want closure / I want to feel the gravity of losing you.”
U is an incredibly refreshing experience — the dynamism that is missing in modern pop. It is angry, jubilant and melancholic over the course of its tight runtime, earning every emotional beat and never overstaying its welcome. The album was made to be played in the Urban Outfitters of a mall 13 years ago, but has a longevity earned by its timeless themes and innovative production. While I miss the conceptual ambition Grey is capable of that was let go in the making of this album, the sharp passion project that we get as a result is hard not to love. She makes it easy to believe her on “Music” when she declares that “It’s everything to me!”
Richard Li is a member of the Class of 2026 in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a contributor for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at rl799@cornell.edu.
