As the title track kicks off this latest album from Carrington MacDuffie, my mind turns to thoughts of Prince. Not because they are necessarily sonically that similar, although somewhere in the threads of fantastic funk and soul sass and pop groove and eclectic and unexpected songwriting, there is some small echo, but mainly because of the eclecticism and adventure at work here.
As a neat contrast to this vibrant opener, the sweet sonics of ‘Sonar,’ the electronic sheen and ambient cascades feel like you are moving through a dream world, and then ‘Rebel in The House of Love’ is pure electro-rock and roll, a comprehensive blend of raw, gnarly guitars and digital delirium, feeling like a song that, if The Rocky Horror Show were being written today, could easily have been one of it signature moments.
‘Sweet Pea’ is a beguiling, folky-finessed ballad, an ode to the fragility, brevity, and absurdity of life; ‘Better That Way’ is Bowie-esque and effortlessly groovesome, dynamically playful, and flippin’ fantastic.
Proving that it is as much the glory of the past as the potential of what’s to come that influences the music, ‘My Own Thing’ is a futuristic array of cosmic ambiance and eerie echo, shot through with blunt trauma guitar scores, before ‘Follow Your Arrow’ plays us out with its live-for-today, fist-in-the-air anthem to individuality.
The more you play this album, the more you ‘get’ Carrington MacDuffie and her music. You get that she is done with genres, at least with the idea of consistently sticking with any one of them. You will get that these are songs with a serious message, and that message is largely this: carpe diem, live in the moment, life is short, so try to have fun. And you will get that glam, disco, rock, and pop are not so different from each other at a sonically molecular level, and if you want to find that strange and unlikely place on the musical Venn Diagram where they all meet, then you can only get there via albums like Sugar Drip.
Not that there are many albums like Sugar Drip, nor artists like Carrington MacDuffie for that matter.
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