A Gorgeous Mess | Rina Sawayama - Hold The Girl Album Review
Rina Sawayama’s sophomore album comes across as a bit all-over-the-place but her quality still shines through.
Artist: Rina Sawayama
Genres: Dance-Pop, Electropop, Pop-Rock
Length: 46 minutes
Rating: 7/10.
Listen to the album here.
Before bagging a sweet, semi-long-term deal with big-time independent label Dirty Hit records in 2020, Rina Sawayama was already making waves in the world of left-field pop music thanks to her brilliant 2017 EP RINA. The dance and electronic-music-inspired sound of the EP along with clear influences from various other genres including (but not limited to) contemporary R&B and mid-’00s Pop Rock attracted a lot of ears. Everyone from critics to fans of “weird” pop music were impressed by this catchy, complex, futuristic record from an artist that seemingly nobody had heard of, until then.
It is this indie darling image of hers that would give Rina the aforementioned Dirty Hit deal less than three years later. Now, with more eyeballs on her than ever before and the support of a renowned label with her, I was very excited to see what she would do next. Will she fall prey to the infamous ‘sophomore slump’? Will she dilute her sound in order to lure in more listeners? Well, just one spin of her debut album SAWAYAMA would tell you that the answer to both those questions was a resounding ‘no’. With this album, Rina managed to refine her sound while still maintaining that element of freshness and futurism that had given her fame to begin with. The album was moderately successful by a newcomer’s standards and got great critical reception, as well. While this only added to her reputation of being a solid alt-pop artist, it also put her under a tiny bit more pressure to follow up her debut album with a solid project. And with Hold The Girl, Rina does exactly that. This album has solidified her place as one of the most prominent and consistent popstars out right now.
Similar to Dynasty, the opener to her debut album, Minor Feelings starts this album by setting the tone - both lyrically and sonically - for the rest of the album. The noise in the background that sounds like a child speaking gibberish foreshadows the themes of Rina’s imperfect childhood that are brought up several times in the album. Similarly, the big, grandiose instrumental subtly tells us to expect more of the same from the next forty-odd minutes. The shimmering guitars and piano notes, coupled with the slightly echoey production gives the song an air of grandeur and makes it feel big. This complements the heartfelt lyrics superbly. Rina, on this track, recalls the mistreatment (and in some cases, abuse) that folks of East Asian descent had to face all over the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. To illustrate this, she brings up a specific incident that she read in an article where a COVID-19 patient refused to be treated by an Asian nurse because of her race. In the next verse, she recalls a childhood memory where she would build a fort inside of her house, between the sofa and the windowsill, because she wasn’t allowed to go out much. While, at face value, both of these issues might seem small, Rina tells us how all these minor issues build up and take a toll on the person facing them.
“All my life, I've been saving face
Well, all these minor feelings
Are majorly breaking me down”
[…]
“All these minor feelings
Are majorly getting to me now”
The second track on this album, titled Hold The Girl, is a bit of a mixed bag. It begins with another “big” instrumental piece with Rina’s beautiful, reverb-drenched, belted vocals on the foreground before transitioning into this cheap, heavy-handed Dance-Pop tune. Even after multiple listens, I just cannot understand what might have come over Rina to fiddle with that gorgeous intro like this and turn it into a messy hodgepodge of a chamber-pop-inspired ballad and a second class Dance-Pop track. The chopped vocals on the Dance side of the track, the basic stock EDM drum pattern, the heavy-handed transitions - everything about it seems very plastic and, frankly, unnecessary. On the other hand, I think the acoustic guitar, the scattered piano notes, and the occasional violin cameos on the ballad side of the track sound very sweet and pleasing to the ears. The songwriting on this track is just fine. Rina touches upon the issues that she faced while growing up with a single mother and how that forced her to “grow up” so quickly that she had no time to embrace her inner child. However, I can’t help but feel like the production choice on this track really lets the lyrics down.
A little further into the album, towards the halfway point, we have the trio of Holy (Till You Let Me Go), Your Age, and Imagining which only provides more fuel to my theory of some of the electronic-music-inspired elements on the album holding it down. The first of these three tracks features some really, really unpleasant vocal effects and a drumline that sounds like it was generated by an AI that was fed all the popular early ‘10s Pop/EDM crossovers. The next track kicks off with a weird, sharp, shrill string instrument that sounds a bit irritating and then the song develops into an electropop number with massive NPC filler track vibes. It is honestly a Herculean task to take the vocals of a performer as talented as Rina Sawayama and then turn them into an unlistenable mess with your engineering and production and still, it happens quite a few times on this album. The final track on this leg of the album titled Imagining is just as bad as the other two aforementioned tracks (if not worse). I don’t even want to get into how ugly that chorus is. Please, let’s just leave it at that and get into the following track Frankenstein which sounds significantly better than the three tracks preceding it. The punchy guitar riffs and upbeat drums paired with whatever that rattling percussion instrument is, lay down the foundation for a pretty solid Pop Rock bop. Rina’s held back delivery on the verses and the pre-chorus builds up the hype for the hook really well and the chorus itself is quite rewarding and catchy.
As much as I dislike the approach to Dance-Pop that this album takes on certain occasions, I can still safely say that the production on the rest of this album is really, really good. For example, let’s look at the track Hurricanes which immediately follows the previously mentioned Frankenstein. This beautiful ballad is a perfect marriage of Rina’s immaculate vocal performance and some really, really good Pop-Rock instrumentalisation. The mixing on this track really lets the vocals shine through and that works very gorgeously in favour of the song. While the lyrics on the track continue with the themes of growing up in a restrictive household, they aren’t anything to write home about but I don’t really care, to be honest. This song is too good for it to not get a pass.
Send My Love To John is probably my favourite song on the whole album. This sombre, acoustic tear-jerker is written from the perspective of an immigrant mother who is apologising to her queer son for not accepting him sooner. The quiet, repetitive acoustic guitar riff and Rina’s quivering delivery towards the front end of the song make for a perfect ballad. This is easily one of the best vocal performances I’ve witnessed this year. I was bawling my eyes out by the time she reached the chorus.
Another near-perfect track on this album is Forgiveness. This song appears in the first leg of the album alongside other poppy, rock-influenced tracks such as This Hell and Catch Me In The Air. Right from the get-go, the massive percussion lets us know that this track is not here to fuck around. The lead guitar and piano construct a very sweet, saccharin melody that gives the song a very anthemic feel. As Rina starts singing about how forgiveness is a long journey, the instrumental keeps purring on - a massive payoff in the form of a huge chorus is right around the corner. You can feel it. And there it is: an absolute behemoth of a hook by Rina. This shit is arena-ready man. God, I fucking love this woman and her vocal chords. How do you even do that?! There is no “civil”, “formal” way to put this. Forgiveness is a banger and a half. This track screams main stage at Coachella. Everything about this song right from the slow, methodical build-up, Rina’s voice control, and those tiny bits of whiny electric guitar sprinkled across the track to just the perfect amount of reverb on the vocals during the chorus is crying out to be performed in front of a crowd of tens of thousands at Wembley. Easily, easily the most impressive song on the album from a production point of view.
Catch Me In The Air and This Hell are two more songs that impressed me. The former of the two is an inspiring ballad where Rina sheds light upon the mutually supportive relationship that she and her mother share. Growing up with nobody else but each other, these two women have had to look out for each other every step of the way and those feelings are conveyed very beautifully through the lyrics on this track. The production here is pretty good as well - very elaborate and poppy. The other track This Hell, however, is slightly more radio-friendly than Catch Me In The Air. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, as the song features a very catchy main riff and hook. The punchy beat only adds more flair and charisma to the song. Here, Rina suggests that even though the current state of the world is not ideal, having someone to endure it with makes it slightly more bearable. The lines criticising evangelists for their incessant, unnecessary homophobia and the paparazzi for their mistreatment of various celebrities and public figures such as Britney Spears, Princess Diana, and Whitney Houston land very well and still manage to pack a punch in spite of the overall carefree, casual mood of the song.
While the album ends in a slightly underwhelming fashion with the boring, lukewarm tracks Phantom and To Be Alive, I think it still manages to do a good job and provides listeners with enough moments of magic to be forgiven for its minor sins. More than anything else, this album proves that her fans can safely trust Rina Sawayama with a more-than-competent project every time. While it is true that Hold The Girl does not necessarily reinvent the wheel of Pop music, I don’t think it should feel the need to. Because in spite of its minor flaws and slightly inconsistent nature, the album is still one of the freshest sounding pop releases of the year. The record adds another feather to Rina’s cap and lets everybody know that she’s not a flash in the pan and is here to stay for a long, long time. And I, for one, am very happy about that.