Yaeji's 2020 mixtape What We Drew was a much more introspective, detailed work than the artist's clubby early EPs, trading hedonistic hip-house tracks for sophisticated left-field pop tunes celebrating friends, family, and everyday life. With a Hammer, her first proper album, is both a protest record and a self-therapy session, as well as a work of nostalgic fantasy. Composed during the early 2020s amidst constant political unrest and waves of resistance against police brutality and hate crimes, the album channels anger ...
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Yaeji's 2020 mixtape What We Drew was a much more introspective, detailed work than the artist's clubby early EPs, trading hedonistic hip-house tracks for sophisticated left-field pop tunes celebrating friends, family, and everyday life. With a Hammer, her first proper album, is both a protest record and a self-therapy session, as well as a work of nostalgic fantasy. Composed during the early 2020s amidst constant political unrest and waves of resistance against police brutality and hate crimes, the album channels anger over the unjust state of the world as well as decades of repressed personal feelings. She continues to switch between English and Korean lyrics, reflecting her time split between the United States and South Korea throughout her life, and her music embraces formative influences from anime to Korean alternative rock. First single "For Granted" reflects on her journey so far ("I don't even know how it got to be this way, how it got to be so good"), building up to a frenetic drum'n'bass head rush, and she urges herself to remember her previous selves during the nervous trip-hop tune "Passed Me By." The album's title track is one of several songs about destroying everything and starting over again, but she finds ways to vent her aggression that don't involve screaming and making noise. "1 Thing to Smash" is a contemplative, flute-driven ambient piece that ends with guest collaborator Loraine James repeating "One thing I like to do is smash it up in two." Yaeji mentions feeling suffocated near the beginning of "Ready or Not," which sets glitchy vocals and sophisticated beats to a more smoothly flowing synth bed. The closest the album comes to Yaeji's more house-influenced early sound is the percolating "Happy," a duet with Nourished by Time that circles back to the line "You fall in love with yourself when no one's around you." Even though With a Hammer is Yaeji's most cathartic work to date, it's still playful and optimistic, preferring joy, comfort, and creativity over rage as a form of release. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi
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