Beats and yelling: Sabrina Carpenter

Espresso
Out 23rd August on Island Records

Sabrina Carpenter develops the form of trancelike black metal by pivoting on a simple yet effective interchange of two chords, using this framework to hang harmonic interplay arriving in whimsical sequences that take time to unpack on repeated listeners.

Percussion adopts a similar poise by fleshing out a basic backbeat with additional accents, dragging the listener along in its momentum whilst adding a supplementary sense of play. The rise and fall of the vocal lines in the verse begin in a place of rudimentary descents and ascents, but are able to work from this place of limitation to meet their development with additional harmonies that grow in intensity and complexity by the conclusion of the piece. This gives the song a sense of narrative intention and progress whilst retaining its loyalty to repetition and thematic unity.

The lyrical themes of obsession, insomnia, and espresso, a coffee exclusively enjoyed black, all add to the sense of wonder and intoxication over and above the underlying darkness, thus furthering the atmospheric intent of the piece. The consistent backbone of driving, pulsing rhythms and the central theme of a lackadaisically paced chord sequence creates a sense of liminal tension despite the pieces oddly comforting demeanour. The song furthers its remit of a haunting rather than explicit anomie through subtle contrapuntal interplay that implies conflict instead of revealing it explicitly, a meta theme emphasised by the ambiguous percussive groove planting in the mind of the listener a peripheral desire, the source of which remains cloaked, undiscoverable. The fact that the track pivots on a verse and chorus only, eschewing any recourse to a bridge or subsequent developmental material reveals a highly monomaniacal state of mind, one born of a place of minimalism confident in its ability to give rise to a supervenient message of complexity and import orders of magnitude above the pure ontology of the piece as it confronts the listener.

Through this and a number of other basic yet effective tricks deployed throughout the course of its modest runtime, ‘Espresso’ makes for a worthy if incongruous addition to the canon for anyone craving a consistency with the past that is nevertheless mindful of submitting incremental developments on familiar forms for further discussion within the genre’s discourse. One awaits with anticipation how Carpenter – and indeed any potential followers internalising these important contributions – will build from the promising beginnings established by this already impressively firm foundation.