Well, this is the good kind of surprise. The Danish musician Erika de Casier has a cool, atmospheric take on pop music, and she's already made a powerful impact on actual global pop music rather than just the boutique, conceptual version of the stuff. A few years ago, de Casier helped write and produce a bunch of game-changing hits from the K-pop girl group NewJeans, which is now sadly on hiatus over some record-label bullshit. On her own, de Casier makes slinky, inviting studio-pop, and her album Still was one of our favorites of last year. She also teamed up with Nick León for the cult hit "Bikini." I don't think anyone was expecting Erika de Casier to drop another LP so quickly, but she's back today with the surprise LP Lifetime.
Erika de Casier wrote and producer Lifetime entirely on her own, and she started teasing it when she sold a set of unlabeled cassettes up for sale on Bandcamp last year. Someone posted the music from one of those tapes on YouTube, and now the whole album is here. It represents a real sonic departure for de Casier, taking her away from sleekly architectural dance-pop and into something that sure sounds like '90s trip-hop to my ears.
On Lifetime, Erika de Casier sings over foggy, evocative instrumentals built from cinematic synth-drones and slow-creep breakbeats. Thanks to de Casier's airy voice and precise songwriting, Lifetime never really recalls obvious touchstones like Portishead or Massive Attack. This music is a little too fussy and elegant for that, at it makes me think of stuff like the Sneaker Pimps or Madonna's Bedtime Stories. This record is sounding really good this morning, and you can stream it below.
Lifetime is out now on Independent Jeep Music.
