Comes on limited edition milky white vinyl LP.
Billie Eilish’s awaited third LP, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, is exactly the kind of album that pop music needed right now—if only because it’s not a bloated misfire. It doesn’t hurt that Eilish’s latest is also pretty good. Even when the 22-year-old isn’t putting out records, she’s still winning awards and outpacing her peers without missing a step.
“BIRDS OF A FEATHER” sticks out on every listen. It very well might be Eilish’s best song yet—the kind of career highlight you’d expect someone like Clairo to make, existing so far in the pop world that, on paper, it very well might be out of Eilish’s wheelhouse altogether. But Billie attacks the track without fear, and it’s so bubbly that the era of Happier Than Ever all but goes extinct in a flash. The “birds of a feather, we should stick together” is cliché in theory, but Eilish and Finneas land it colorfully. “I said I’d never think I wasn’t better alone,” Eilish continues. “Can’t change the weather, might not be forever. But, if it’s forever, it’s even better.” “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” is a no-frills pop hit that will only continue to grow in majesty and in likability. It’s summery and earnest, as the “I don’t think I could love you more, it might not be long, but baby, I’ll love you ‘til the day that I die” pre-chorus matches the lightness of Finneas’ synthesizers and looping guitar arpeggios, which, along with Eilish’s sugary-sweet singing, sound like a bouquet of immersive, frictionless pop ecstasy.
But where “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” has all the makings of a track that, in five years, will sound just as timeless as it does right now, “WILDFLOWER” and “THE GREATEST” are inconsequential folk-pop songs that leave just as fast as they arrived (though the former does delve into a layered, operatic climax). That’s not to say they aren’t good songs; Finneas’ minimalism works here because it’s not as thin as it could be. His lack of restraint sounds like precision, and he packs as many elements behind his sister’s voice as it requires—and these two midpoints on the album don’t require much beyond some sultry strums, though they certainly do. It’s Billie’s voice that commands your attention—allowing the listener to put their full focus on lines like “Doing what’s right without a reward, and we don’t have to fight when it’s not worth fighting for.”
“L’AMOUR DE MA VIE” is one of most dynamic soundscapes Finneas has ever put together. The way the soft-and-sleek singing Eilish performs—which hits a groove that flourishes somewhere between department store pop (non-derogatory) and beachfront R&B—erupts into a pitch-shifted synth-pop outro will rattle you in a good way. The siblings want to keep the listener on their toes, and “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE” does its best to explore two distinctive scenes in the space of a five-and-a-half-minute vacuum. “But I wish you the best for the rest of your life” sounds like the sweetest “fuck you” that Billie can conjure up; the song’s “kill you with kindness” energy can’t help but fold into its own jaggedness, and the results are frantic, hued with derangement and downright marvelously chaotic.
But out of all of HIT ME HARD AND SOFT’s dynamic switches, wall-to-wall catchiness and new vocal experiments, it’s hard to look away from the record’s most glaring accomplishment: Billie Eilish has moved on from her coming-of-age origins and settled nicely into a musical persona that seems to mirror her own authentic self, rather than come across as tailored to the wants of some commercial or critical machine. She’s no longer an 18-year-old walking out of Staples Center in Los Angeles with an armful of Grammy Awards; she’s an irreversibly famous and successful musician who just wants to get down with queer love and have the space to figure out what works and what doesn’t. HIT ME HARD AND SOFT sounds exactly like what being 22 years old felt like, told by someone who has lived a life of grandiose, relentless celebrity since before she was old enough to get a driver’s license but hasn’t let that outmuscle the humanity of herself. There’s no lore to sift through on this record, only Billie Eilish’s attention to the details of everything fleeting around her. Life—and its desires and hardships—is a craving, and it’s plentiful and resounding to hear Billie attempt to untangle it.(source is www.paste.com)
