Hemlock Springs: Apple Tree Under the Sea review – DayGlo DIY triumph in the age of risk-averse pop | music

WWe often hear about the devastating impact social media has had on pop music, from toxic fan culture to the way online rumors reduce song lyrics to treasure hunts for details about artists’ private lives. But its positive effects are also worth noting: how TikTok users can make unlikely pieces of pop history go viral; How social media can transform the fortunes of an artist who might not have made it past a record company reception in today’s risk-averse age.

Which brings us to North Carolina’s Isimeme Udu, otherwise known as Hemlocke Springs, who has become known for posting homemade videos of her songs on TikTok. There’s always the possibility that a brand might have captured a bespectacled 27-year-old former librarian with a penchant for neon-colored wigs, feeding “awkward black girl anthems” with a lo-fi take on ’80s-influenced pop, but you wouldn’t bet on it. Self-released, her songs have racked up millions of streams and attracted the attention of Doja Cat and Chappell Roan, both of whom have taken her on tour: Watch a video of Springs backing Roan at New York’s Forest Hills Arena last fall, performing “Girlfriend” while most of the 13,000-person audience sang along.

It’s a heart-warming success story — a DIY artist who succeeds on the strength of geeky, down-home authenticity and the crazy catchiness of her tunes — or at least it comes to that. Online reach tends to depend on novelty, and it is in the nature of novelty to wear off. The obvious question hanging over Springs’ debut album is whether he can translate one form of success into another, more familiar and sustainable one. But The Apple Tree Under the Sea suggests that immediate mainstream success is not what Hemlock Springs wants.

Like her previous singles, the album was self-released (via the label services company Awal). You can find out. If a major brand had been involved, one suspects they might have steered it towards something less special. Perhaps there’s something closer in tone to the songs that caught her attention than this concept album about her upbringing as the child of devout Christian Nigerian parents, filled with songs that decry their homeland’s deep-rooted cultural practice of arranged marriage (“I’d rather kill myself than look him in the eye and say I want your love,” she sings on wwwww), or that invoke God using the ancient Hebrew name El Shaddai. They likely would have ensured more familiar names appeared in the songwriting credits — the album is a collaboration between Springs and Burns, an English EDM producer best known for writing a few songs on Lady Gaga’s Chromatica — and perhaps have done their best to soften the album’s sound into something more homogeneous.

As it is, you move from loud electronics to dance-pop to 80s metal guitars to music that, with its huge staccato vocals, has something of a show tune about it; From the song’s piano and pizzeria strings to the music that is variously reminiscent of Prince, Stevie Nicks and Britney Spears. All of these differences happen in the space of three songs.

There are points where this right-swipe-filled eclecticism can become a bit tiresome, exacerbated by the seemingly endless flexibility of Springs’ voice, which can shift from raw and seemingly unconsidered to polite and carefully articulated in the blink of an eye. But equally, there are points where it works to stunning effect, as in Sever the Blight — where an intro evoking Kate Bush gives way to a swath of the film’s dramatic soundtrack, which is replaced by brittle electronic pop — or Muse, who switches from a gospel choir to an ominous bass riff to a groovy pop chorus. The latter seems key: even at its most scattered, the music here is always associated with the precise kind of well-crafted earworms that have defined Springs’ online breakthrough. Meanwhile, the lyrics are no less interesting at all. “I wonder who’s walking around with fertilizer and magnifying all the stress in her head,” she sings on “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Ankles,” a phrase that rhymes with “the dark, dark corners of your bed.”

The stuff that’s most reminiscent of their hits — like the wonky attitude of something you could imagine the characters on Stranger Things breaking down in their downtime — are all isolated toward the end of the album: in fairness, the whole thing is over in barely 30 minutes, but you still feel like you’ve traveled a long way to get there. Then again, a major label might have had something to say about curating an album like this, and more of their shenanigans. Springs’ approach is engagingly assured: this is what I want to do, this is who I am, take it or leave it. It’s an approach that sometimes leads to mainstream fame—you can see a similar difficulty in Chapelle Rouen—but is more likely to lead to great success. One would think that was exactly the goal here, and in this case: mission accomplished.

Alexis listened this week to

Sofia Cortesses – Los Puymas No Siempre Reman
A perfect counterpart to February’s relentless gray misery: a house collaboration with Afro-Peruvian band Novalima that exudes warmth and joy without slipping into cliché.