I see a lotta younger folk, misinformed and wellintentioned. From afar, I say I get the impulse. I used to wanna do it too. One of my earliest ambitions as an aspiring, eager eyed ‘critic’ was to praise and take seriously music that would get critically ignored not because of it being obscure, but the opposite — it being so popular and successful in ways that are typically easy to ignore if you just pay no mind to the surface. I used to be a champion for those measly corporate artists, imbuing their music with significance and importance and artistic Heft, the kind that the millions listening to them on the day to day, well, they’re not acknowledging it, right? That was the philosophy: a diamond in the rough can be hidden in plain sight, all it takes is the right digging and a good reasoning, and now any schmuck peaking at #27 on some chart can easily become an underappreciated genius. Such is the ignorance of the bright eyed. Is there love for the broken?
Ideals like that, well let’s say the more they last the harder the trust in them will rot. Truth is (and do not mistake for a second an intent to withdraw myself from this narrative; I am for one of the most culpable culprits in this terrifying maze, a sadsack ‘Defender of The Discount Kool-Aid who may forever lie in these gooey pools of rhetoric until well beyond my grave) most of these theories tiredly boringly wind down to being a contrarian’s contrarian: childish attempts to ‘outsmart’ those who think themselves elites, and turning their smug theory on their face to justify one’s lack of interest in…well, anything that isn’t already of one’s interest. See days of defending Jason Derulo deep cuts and novelty singles and treating such activity as defiant and ‘open-minded’ only gets to build a shutinonitself logic, one where blatant ignorance of anything outside one’s field of vision is not only accounted for, but implicitly encouraged. Where, actually, not stepping outside one’s comfort zone not exactly knowing where one will land — maybe even feeling the weight of inexperience and plain discomfort — is a noble pursuit! You’re standing up for the little guy, doing something no one else is doing right in front of everyone’s nose! Stickin’ it up to those snobs on their pretty little magazines! Theydaknow what they talkin’ about, connect with everyday people! Ridicahlous.
Here’s the awful dirty little secret that makes this a tad (just a tad) complicated: those snobs on their pretty little magazines indeed often don’t know what they’re talkin’ about, and their logic is often turned the other way around for a similar grotesque cheerleading of obscurity for the sake of obscurity — and such is the case of most music journalism, it’s all turned into a fetish. So really there’s no clean-cut way to define this paradigm, but the other way around is simply easier. In the era of stans, dimeadozen senses of morality, and Content as Law, flaunting ignorance is the way for most people who don’t, y’know, really wanna take themselves or their taste all that seriously and just wanna like what they like except times have made it so everyone is insecure about everything and said people need someone with big Critic Slash Journalist Slash Serious Person words to tell them that it’s ok for them to like what they like. Any excursion away from that ideal would be - eugh - putting time and effort and lordforbid research (what is this, homework??) into a fun activity, and that’d just be killing your own buzz. So congratulations! Liking the things you already like means you’re very smart and - and… a morally sound person. And if you dislike the things you already dislike, even more so! Now go off and stream away!
Whole thing’s a rat’s nest, and it’s come to the point where I can’t find myself trusting pretty much anyone. I used to have long upheld ideals within this field that I’m just tired of, and I see no tangible answers to break away from this dilemma that aren’t scooped in petty individualism — best case scenario, I save myself, but the craft still ends in the gutter. I’ve seen many people, some of whom I’m ‘supposed’ to respect (but not exclusively), reaching similar conclusions and basking in the joy of doing it for the sake of it, and wrapping themselves around the love of the form, and maybe their sunbeams fragmented in interviews and soft pitches get to shine on other people; ain’t that every writer’s dream? Ah, well you’ll have to excuse me if I get my thrills on the basis of acting on behalf of spite and grudges. I don’t like the attitude of the people I see. I think standards are being dropped as a survival and coping mechanism (on both ends I previously described), and if that’s the price to pay I choose to live within my ever present frustration, and said frustration tells me: things are not getting better, the scenes are filled with charlatans and promoters, whatever scrap of a pleasure something new and shiny can bring us now adds nothing to the long run, hype is cheap, antihype is even cheaper, numbers are meaningless, everyone’s talking for no one (Hi! Hope you’re enjoying this text so far! - Rod), circlejerking positivity devalues the real good going around, pride is currency, etc., etc.
Safe to say, there’s no criteria I can believe in. Can’t even believe my own nowadays. I’m about to talk about an album I really like and I also think is really good, but I can’t recommend it or discuss it without any guarantee of understanding or coherence within my own words. I might even go as far as to shrug off the importance of coherence, but I know deep down I could never get there - and that’s a burden of sorts.
I'm foaming at the mouth, but bring me some little doll, give me some tea with a bit of sugar, and maybe I'll calm down. I'll even wax tenderhearted, though afterwards I'll certainly gnash my teeth at myself and suffer from insomnia for a few months out of shame. Such is my custom.
Time Machine is an album by Finnish pop songwriter ALMA. She had her days of behind the scenes pop songwriting for Miley Cyrus, had a couple hits on her own in middle Europe - none of which are worth discussing - and some projects that were kinda well received in the lower spheres of the alt-pop scenes with not much fanfare beyond that. Having listened to no more than 3 (three) ALMA songs before this album, Time Machine caught my eye on the basis of the producers involved: Elvira Anderfjärd, Oscar Görres and Fat Max Gsus. Three Swedes low yet present on the Max Martin-adjacent songwriting food chain.
Görres has been around for the better part of a decade assisting from the sidelines in MXM productions for artists like DNCE or Adam Lambert or Troye Sivan — the one major with the man himself is a deep cut on Taylor Swift’s reputation, “So It Goes…” — and his style is mainly adding more bubblegum to the sticky 80s synths already used. The other two are fresh meat. Fat Max Gsus is more of an instrumentalist, aiding songs like The Weeknd’s “Save Your Tears” and Justin Bieber’s “Somebody”, but his increasingly growing songwriting/production credits suggest a deeper power-rock sensibility (his biggest claims to fame are Maisie Peters’ “Cate’s Brother” and Ghost’s “Call Me Little Sunshine”).
Elvira on the other hand is one I’ve been keeping my eye on for years: she has grown to be one of the most eclectic and singular talents within these circles. She shares Max’s keen ear for timing within melody, but her sounds are more ethereal, less punchy. Her M.O. consists of trimming individual snippets of sound - whether they be vocal or instrumental - and turning them into lines of percussion that are then harmonized to create the bulk of a song, while all the edges are smoothed out to feel as though the crunch, the singularity, of each element doesn’t get meshed up into a ball of faceless sound. Often that leads to a lot of ugly sounds, dragging the song around plastic mud, but taking in the song’s stories as unique - even kinda rebellious. Her work with vocals is quite crucial, as she’ll pile up different takes from different voices (often including her own voice in the mix) to create a catharsis that feels not rehearsed at all, simply a product of craft and inventiveness. Her sounds are often plucky, chirpy, intentionally lo-fi, and her sense of harmony places emotion above precision. In essence, she believes the Swedish method of surgical songwriting that has marked the last 25 years of mainstream pop music can be used in the name of spontaneity and a grounded search of emotion, instead of ‘merely’ being aesthetically unimpeachable.
Some examples of Elvira’s work before we move on to Time Machine itself, now realizing in the middle of writing this that there aren’t that many but we’ll see what we can do: Tove Lo’s “sadder badder cooler” (a Martin cowrite) plastifies Tove’s voice beyond the usual and sets up overpolished basic drum pads to become slightly unsettling (notice the handclap snare coming in a couple measures before the chorus). BENEE’s “Green Honda” works through a mid-2000s electroclash revival and compresses it enough to turn the singer’s detachment into a reckless cry for help. Crucially, she took Taylor Swift’s unreleased Martin/Shellback-aided song “Message in a Bottle” and kept Martin’s structure while adding a stronger ebb-and-flow within the vocal takes, adding odd sloppy harmonies within the chorus (like second guessing and gaining strength at the same time), slightly pinning down Taylor’s voice in the verses, slowing down the song in the bridge and not building it up artificially, so when the final breaking point comes it’s taking in the air instead of priding itself in knowing the answers. (I expect her to be a presence on the upcoming 1989 rerecording, and I’ll gladly welcome her contributions.)
Certain aspects of this album I don’t really like. For one, many of the songs are way too short and end before a final hurrah that would tie them together. “Everything Beautiful” and “I Forgive Me” in particular conspicuously cut themselves short to last around 2 minutes and 20 seconds, the time limit for a Twitter video - not conspiracy theorizin’ but it is an awful lot convenient. Another issue is the general sound which all three producers manage to be in tune with, it’s typically not my kinda sound: too edgeless, too plain, lacking a certain bite that ALMA’s voice can convincingly deliver (she doesn’t growl nearly as much as I’d like), a lotta good grooves sound too fundamentally flaccid to really grip me in. In fact, most of them didn’t until the 10th or 15th listen I gave this album, where my mind had fully internalized the music’s in’n’outs and now I can enhance these tones inside my own head. But still, the music is too sweeping on its own to excuse these concerning shortbringings. For that matter, way too much reverb all over.
All the songs are great, great, great except for “Stupid People” which blows hard; the striking cynical antithesis to everything this project proposes. Would suggest skipping it even on first listen.
ALMA had her days of behind the scenes pop songwriting for Miley Cyrus, had a couple hits on her own in middle Europe - none of which are worth discussing - and some projects that were kinda well received in the lower spheres of the alt-pop scenes with not much fanfare beyond that. Time Machine is the fall out of the little high, the dizzying haze turning out to be a stepping stone for a road that sucks, the drop off pulsing harder and stronger than the moments of euphoria, the good deeds turned resentful. This album is best heard while walking down a quiet street when you’re trying to find empty solace in a pop song, and said solace is eventually found by acknowledging its equally quiet insignificance, and appropriating its following pain. ALMA speaks to and about finding contentment in resignation. She steps away from the endless gold rush but keeps the angst with pride, and takes in the hurt of self-fulfilled failure with grace and dignity.
Music that’s very liberated, but also hurtful. That dichotomy proceeds to be explored, as any act of joy or kindness is recontextualized as fuel for inner demons. Lead single “Everything Beautiful” looks for a sense of glee in exploring the city while holding onto an idealized youth, but its central line is ‘Everything beautiful dies’ and its second verse is about the oncoming weight of responsibilities that no one in that scene will handle well. “Summer Really Hurt Us” sees our narrator hopelessly struggling to comprehend how her friends and loved ones stuck by her during a self-destructive period in her life after she’s hurt them, and ends doubtful that they’re all just as fucked up as she is (an echo of The Beach Boys’ “You Still Believe In Me”?). “I Forgive Me”, a cheerful song about learning to be charitable with yourself, has a section in its second verse where ALMA lets her regrets get the better of her and yells ‘I still THINK-A-BOUT-YOU’ and the drums join her in that skipped delivery before settling to the disco groove — the flat mix helps for once, as it puts that outburst as part of her daily monologue. She closes the album with “Hey Mom Hey Dad”, a reassurance to her family that things will work out while painting a cruel portrait of (what appears to be) a(n inherently) broken environment.
What comes to happen is these songs become kinda disarming. You won’t find a lot of altered lyrics in second or third choruses, or even a lot of bridges, so the punch of these complexities is often seen right from the get go. We’re never shown a way out, rather we’re being told how the world around us has gotten stuck on crippling patterns, and sometimes the best way forward may depend on a level of personal stuntedness. The title track, a lovely, elegiac interpretation of ABBA’s “Our Last Summer” that sticks to the band’s tragic daisy-eyed melancholy, harkens back to a golden era of ALMA’s youth, bathing in nostalgia for days gone by. ‘If we only! could go back to 17’. The middle part is an instrumental passage that floats around the room remembering the steps to an old dance with a little too much precision. But the conclusion of the song is repeating its aforementioned central line twice: the first time is followed by backing vocals playing with the final word (‘ee-ee-ee…’) to lead the second iteration to plainly resolve itself, laying its fantasy to rest, exploring it gracefully and then letting it go, rendering the dream as impossible as it is desirable. “The Cure” discusses failure in the words of a one-sided relationship, and halfway through has the guts to hit you with ‘But nothing’s what it seems/All these broken dreams/I’m all out of belief’...and it’s quite obvious she’s talking about something more.
The music is fixated on being partial bedroom installments of big pop songs. There’s a “Blinding Lights” to be found somewhere in “Summer Really Hurt Us”, an “As It Was” in “Run Run Run”, a “Save Your Tears” in “Tell Mama” and “I Forgive Me”, a 2013 Avicii folk pop build up in “One in a Million”. It’s all quite shut-in, under a short budget and a stylistic desire to get out of the feel of a failed omnipresence (it’s all too low quality to be played on nationwide radios), and the aim is to cozy up these sounds to recognize the misshapen ideals within them, and how we live with them every day. The air is quiet, but also grand.
I’ve already hyped up Elvira enough in this piece to later sideline her when it comes to the proper album, so we might as well tackle parts of her work right away. Elvira was the album’s executive producer, with production credits on about half the songs. Her main contributions are in the service of the ‘lesser’ songs within the album’s structure, i.e. the ones that don’t pop as bright, the ones almost planned out to be deep cuts. She’s deeply informed by ALMA’s emotional careering, and proceeds to detail out the compositions by way of coloring outside the lines. We’ve already discussed the titular cut, secretly emblematic of the songs with Elvira’s touch in them, which boils down to the minimal use of drums. Cuts like “Dreaming” and “One in a Million” only introduce a percussive set around the second verse, and never really develop them all that much; emotional breaking point “Natalia” sparingly uses a couple loose kicks by the end. As such, plenty of the material feels more desolate than usual, working with subtly empty spaces. Said spaces are filled out by chanting background vocals - somewhat teasing, but eventually empathetic - and heavy arpeggios (found in guitars, harpsichord keys, chirpy retro synths). Considering the lack of fluidity within the sounds, the tunes get to have a certain sway to them that helps establish the ‘soft meandering’ vibe.
As for the other presences behind the board, Fat Max Gsus naturally gets the more robust songs going, reaching the pop rock side of the record, and his instrumental work feels a tad less blurry, more bass-driven. “I Forgive Me” comes in after a particularly bleak couple of songs and serves as a well-placed breather in the shape of a four-by-four with one of the few proper bass lines on the album, and the tighter focus helps ALMA herself let loose a little bit in the delightful bit-sized chorus (‘Iforgiveme! Oh what else can I do…’). The lighter momentum is kept in the following “Run Run Run”, the most successful attempt at escapism on the album, a suggestion to a lover to escape their sorry little town, that has a rather strong surprise of a pre-chorus when you think the verse is going straight to the hook and, instead, builds a pointy bit of momentum for a surefire answer (‘Ba-by-I’ll-fo-llow-you-anywhere’). And as for “Everything Beautiful”, it’s the sunniest piece here despite the creeping fogginess circling it: diamond keys making way for a tense-free tension (if you will) of a guitar doodle mapping ALMA’s delicate singing (‘Beee young and pretty with you-u-u…’), before a twinkling piano overtakes a joyous hook despite all odds. Details abound in the song: cooing background vocals treasuring ALMA’s words, drums cascading atop themselves in the chorus, a witty roulette to kick off the bridge, horns looming over a potential horizon as the song feels it’s about to crumble in its own doubt. Should’ve soundtracked many an early summer party, when the sun hasn’t fully set and maybe this time it’ll be better than the last.
Oscar Görres has two songs, one the still-good but lesser cut “I Will Survive” and the other one the thesis of the album “Tell Mama”, and despite the producer’s wider experience behind the boards they manage to sound about the same in aesthetic train of thought as everything else here; only major difference is they feature somewhat more ‘conventional’ buildups as they go along. “I Will Survive” is melancholic but jaunty, progressively getting louder and featuring synth lines refusing to stick to one melody. “Tell Mama” fiddles around with a jumpy chord progression, brings about a couple fun breakdowns, and then miraculously executes a wrenching key change. Only one song that isn’t produced by any of the talents already brought up, and that’s “Summer Really Hurt Us” with duo DECCO in charge, a great tune in the proud lineage of dancefloor bummers, with stickier drum beats and more of an overtly nighttime discotheque feel than the rest of the repertoire, with possibly the instantly catchiest earworm here, yet just as detail-heavy in the little things — check ALMA’s bitter confession in the second verse, ‘and said some things ‘bout you…’, how a synth line rises from the silence to discreetly point to the regret, turning it from unspoken to pointedly visceral.
For the longest time I took to ignoring the opening track “Dreaming”. It hadn’t made a good impression on me the first couple times I went through this project front to back. Thought it was too bland, not very catchy, and the parts I did remember were kinda spineless compared to the rest of the album. The chorus goes ‘I'm dreaming life, I'm dreaming love/I'm leaving hurt/I'm dreaming peace for me and the world’ with a marching drum tune; the kind of simplisticalsodumb writing that the following songs would go on to debunk. In my head I took it as an opening showcase of the innocence that will then be doubted upon and eventually lost, but it didn’t gel as music.
Then one day skipping around the songs I decided to go for it and really give it a chance. First thing that caught my eye was I’d never noticed the opening lines, both to the song and project: ‘Yeah, I’ve always wondered/What it feels like/To be in pain/And feel nothing’. Said words are accompanied by a bass and a church organ, sounds that will persist throughout the song. The words then proceed to name out ambitions that seem to come easy for others, but make the singer feel trapped and inadequate. ‘No holiday for the patient’, ‘No young love for the wicked’. Never mind the singing, softly shaking at certain words or twisting the melody.
The chorus for a while continued to bother me, but I grew to like ALMA’s youthful singing without sounding pedantic (‘for meeeeennnnth’world’) and the returning synth oddity repeating after every line. But more important than that was the pre-chorus, which breaks from the established chord progression and says ‘Oh tonight they told me, that I'm free to go again/Hopefully this is the last time we meet, my friend’ sung with a proud, head-held-high attitude. It portrays having earned, after a long period of time and effort, a release from something (a belief, a person or group of people, an assignment) and that glimmer of hope sets up the buoyant chorus. The song then acts accordingly: all the disillusions in the verses for once don’t seem to matter as now we’re moving on to greener grass. The church organ even makes it sound like religious ecstasy, heavenly forgiveness. The second iteration of the pre-chorus cuts off the beat for the second line and backs it up with shouting, agitated backing vocals bursting from a subconscious (in an occasionally overwhelming bit of production from Elvira), eager and impatient to walk out and strike those old failures down.
Then after a playful bitpop solo, ALMA returns to the pre-chorus, now sounding weary and shook up, and changes the words completely to say ‘Yesterday they told me I would be free to go again/But tonight my only hope is to pretend’, and the song deflates. The chorus is sung one more time, now defeated and on the edge of tears. Without notice or added development, the bountifulness of the track we’d been hearing, also the foundation of a sonic world, gets shut down by a closed door we never get to see. We are shown the life in the narrator’s eyes being stripped out, and all faith in social institutions being torn apart, leaving its resting members with no answers or illusions.
ALMA’s singing throughout Time Machine feels like a lifetime of things left unsaid being brought upon the most lateral moments in each song. She quivers in “Summer Really Hurt Us” when it’s time for her to reckon with her mistakes (‘...when I did you so wrong…’), and turns the title line into an open question. She over enunciates the word ‘shit’ on the title track on ‘And I was writing songs that sounded shit’, as if to remark that however big her flaws here during those golden years, they didn’t matter, and now she can’t get that carelessness back. She takes the word ‘girl’ in “Hey Mom Hey Dad” and constructs a moving melody, breaking away from the bleak storytelling thus far. That same song explodes in a choral bridge where ALMA finally gets to reach her highest register and attempts (and fails) to free everyone she knows of their collective demons by sheer force. She’s slightly autotuned in “I Will Survive” and that helps her access a nasal delivery that reaches into the frustration of the story (‘I keep fawwwlin’ fawwwlinn’ behind’), and how little it might matter — ditto the backing vocals mawkishly interpolating “Stayin’ Alive” that recognize it’s not enough to just sing it.
At times she gets distractingly powerful and even actively uncomfortable. “Natalia” idealizes the titular character, carefree and glowing in her social life and personal ambitions, as ALMA watches from afar in admiration and also resentment for all the things she’ll never have and she’ll never be — ‘She has found the light/I’m barely alive!/I don’t have nobody/Sing it, oh-oohh-oohh…’ The song unfolds into our narrator falling further and further back into the mix, dropping any melody and just screaming with a shut fist ‘THERE SHE GOES! THERE SHE DANCE! AND SHE’S LAUGHN HER FUCKN FRIENDS!’, more than enough to make you distance yourself from her in by far the most bitter moment in this project. (The fact that it’s apparently about her actual long time girlfriend muddles things even more than they already are.)
But she saves the devastating blows for the moments of unavoidable defeat. The softest moment on the album comes in “The Cure”, the one Fat Max Gsus production that deviates towards a tender feel instead of running through the city. Anachronistically it’s a long-delayed denial of the small glimmer of hope seen in The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” (similar acoustic feel, too) as ALMA tries to rationalize her way to having an object of desire want her the same way she does them, as if this was the last time she’ll ever want something again. She carries the weight of deeply inflicted wounds when she sings ‘So let’s not hurt each other, babyyy’ - worth noting the rising synth before that line, and the ambulance-turned-blinking light after it -, brings an unprecedented sweetness in her voice in ‘We can take it slow, no one has to know…’, curses herself behind her breath while starting the second verse - it even sounds like gibberish. The second half of the song turns into a grand quasi-jangle pop lighters anthem and it’s like she sees a montage of all the good (real and potential) of that relationship and soaks it all in (letting out an ‘ooohhhhh’ that near brings me to tears) before wistfully walking away. We leave behind the hope, but not the way it could’ve felt.
Similarly, “One in a Million” discusses ALMA’s homecoming after being hailed as the one who managed to get out, now coming back in. The verses do a devastating rundown of the characters in her old neighborhood all fallen in disgrace — and Elvira does a stellar job at marking the resigned despair of the song’s members. The singer attempts to reckon with having lived down her former peers’ expectations, in many ways fucking up just like them, attempting to reassure herself that ‘only one in a million wins’. A pained melody, with ALMA scraping her voice to try to will a better answer into fruition, and sharp backing vocals surrounding her (I assume by Elvira herself) like a warm hand on a shoulder. The song then lifts itself up for a choir march, to maybe imagine a better way for everyone: ‘Is there any! (Is there any!) Is there any place for all?’...to gently and hesitantly be brought down by a blunt response: ‘I don’t think so…(I don’t think sooo…)’. Our heroine isn’t special for being left behind a little later than everyone else — if that’s even the case, if she ever even stood a chance.
“Tell Mama” is by all accounts the thesis of Time Machine. It’s the song where ALMA plainly explains her falling out with her environment, and it coming so early on the tracklist denotes the widespread knot in the throat. For once she’s not being coy, and she openly addresses the music industry as a land of wrongful illusions that lead to burnout almost as the default state. But for as angry as the song might feel at first, it isn’t vicious, but rather self-reflexive and even accepting of the void that will come once she gives it all up for good.
Musically it’s not fast, but it leans into a quick tempo, and the chord progressions in the verses suggest an urgency that breaks from the established harmonies. Görres’ work is suave but stellar, filling up the track with a hushed muffle in the rhythm section. ALMA actually doesn’t do much else other than the core melodies, so it’s said core that drives her to a more sinister place (‘Don’t wonder why don’t wasteyour time just wipe your tears away…’), so she comes out of those places in one piece but loses her strength and vision — the final line of the first verse is ‘until the day you’re broken’ and the beat backs off to shine some clarity on what’s really being told. The confessions come in quick and fast and simple, also being filtered by the dark tunnel of the verse melody (‘And I gottoo high, I gottoo wild and scared them all away…’). Meanwhile, others glisten. Is there love for the broken?
The key aspect of this song is that at no moment does it point the blame at anyone other than its own capacity (or lack thereof). Our heroine is smart enough to recognize her own shortcomings as part of why this world was too much for her, and respects those who can take it. The song can be heavy at times but its chugging chorus with its tiny glistenings, it brings to mind open fields - they’re just fields we can’t explore, only taste from the margins. Halfway through the song a seesaw synth appears to deliver a stunning, riveting riff that tiptoes around unexplored footsteps and then leaves them alone; it just wanted to see if it could. Crucially, the words in the chorus tell us ‘Those dreams were not mine’ — if not hers, then whose? — but the bridge sees the singer peacefully bidding adieu to the spaces she tried to, maybe could’ve, occupied one last time: ‘There is no space for all’. I envision the struggle of the eternal outsider settling for their fate, with no hope of getting in but holding on to the feeling of the whatif. Maybe it’s their own doing. Maybe there really is no space for all. Maybe it’s both.
For the last trick the song nakedly (shamelessly) interpolates ABBA’s “SOS” breakdown to, yes indeed, miraculously execute a wrenching key change - just to make this renouncement crystal fuckin’ clear. Listen loudly to the hidden harmonies as ALMA puts her fist up high and declares ‘MAMA oh PLEASE…don’t CRY!!’ and touches the plenitude she’s spent this whole time looking. Empowered by her conscious decision to step away but not let those failed dreams go, allowing them to hunt her forever. She wouldn’t want it any other way. Resignation has rarely ever felt so victorious.
ALMA had her days of behind the scenes pop songwriting for Miley Cyrus, had a couple hits on her own in middle Europe - none of which are worth discussing - and some projects that were kinda well received in the lower spheres of the alt-pop scenes with not much fanfare beyond that. Time Machine is a redemption arc passing as, and slowly turned into, an act of justification, increasingly backing down from getting to redeem whatever there was to make right. As such it’s quite felt music, and the funny thing about it is it’s quite comforting. It aims to please itself by never letting go (didn’t a top 40 philosopher say this year that it’s chemical?) and to feel at peace within that contradiction. Its ultimate take on music, pop music in particular, is as an act of self-preservation driven not out of love, but as led by stubbornness. You can’t have one foot out the door and another one in, that’s unsustainable – but playing around with the balance for 36 minutes is a dare in and of itself. If there really is nothing left to believe in, might as well see where you land.
Returning is a defeat presented as a victory, which by its mere presence turns ironically into a defeat. A rather roundabout way to be honest, but I believe it more than I do a whole lotta other things these days. The crisis of reaching a breaking point equal times deflected upon as insignificant and elevated to self-mythology. And it never really says ‘...but everything will be alright’, yet it never lets itself off the hook either – it rejects the game’s forms and conclusions, but knows that in practice it’s no better than those it aims to walk away from.
As this album ends, with ALMA saying ‘I finally touched what happy is’, a moving sentiment, the implication is that said happy is offscreen, shown to a few intimates but not the whole world, and that that’s how it should be. Yet here we are. With this heavy letter at our disposal. Never quite sure of whether it believes its own arguments, Time Machine presents them anyway, therefore knocking itself out. After all, we get to hear these confessions of leaving as part of a new album with singles, music videos, a tour. If Time Machine really did what it said it would, we’d have nothing at all. It rejects being rejected, but its very own act of refusal hinges on for approval. And therein lies Time Machine’s biggest shining light and heaviest burden: its very own existence.
I say it seriously: surely I'd have managed to discover some sort of pleasure in that as well – the pleasure of despair, of course, but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur, especially when one is all too highly conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.