spill tab, 'ANGIE' Album Review

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Born in Bangkok to a French-Algerian jazz composer father and a Korean pianist and harpist mother, Claire Chicha—who performs under the moniker of spill tab—was never without music: be it the French jazz-folk she absorbed living in Paris, the classical music emanating from her parents’ LA studio, the serene, simple melodies of her childhood in Thailand, or the blaring alternative rock she found in acts like Paramore and Green Day. Her music carries an imprint of each influence. In 2019, she released her debut single “Decompose,” an FKJ-meets-Still Woozy lo-fi pop track. As the next decade began, Chicha integrated into different niches of the indie-pop universe, collaborating with the likes of Tommy Genesis (of Lana Del Rey’s “Peppers” fame) and genre-defining golden boy Gus Dapperton (whom she previously was a merch manager for), as well as landing gigs opening for Wallows and Sabrina Carpenter.

Her full-length debut, ANGIE, follows three EPs and a myriad of singles over the past six years. The record is a noted departure from the uncomplicated bedroom pop of her earliest releases, like 2020’s “Santé” or “Cotton Candy.” Chicha, now with Because Music after a stint under Arista Records, found in ANGIE a reprieve from the rigidity and discomfort she’d felt while working on early releases. Much of the album was built from studio sessions that originally had no end goal in mind; sometimes Chicha and her producers (who included pop regulars John Hill and Solomonophonic) would start with a riff in mind, other times they’d dive into a meandering jam until they heard a snippet of something they liked.

ANGIE emits risk—a true example of an artist ready to take big swings. Chicha is a fearless genre-bender: across 12 tracks, she delves into bossa-funk, new wave, electroclash, ambient folk, and R&B-jazz. There are brain-rattling 808s (“PINK LEMONADE”), catchy surf-rock guitar riffs (“Assis”), ‘80s New Wave synths (“Hold Me”), twangy acoustic passes (“by Design”), pensive trumpet solos (“wet veneer”), piano ballads (“Adore Me”), and TikTok pop melodies (“Athlete”). It’s hard to find something the album doesn’t have. There’s something to be said about making an album entirely on instinct; going with gut feelings might be the best, most natural way to approach art. But on ANGIE, it adds up to a greater lack of cohesion, a missing identity that prevents the album from sounding complete, like a grab-bag rather than a prix fixe. There’s no shortage of ideas Chicha wants to chase down, but casting such a wide net means a few bold measures inevitably fall flat.

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Some, if not most of the songs on ANGIE squeeze a healthy assortment of genres into their 2-to-3-minute runtimes, with few songs ending where they start. Sometimes it works; the title track seamlessly progresses from an acoustic melody to a screeching wall of distorted guitars and hypnotic vocal repetition. The instinctual recording process shines on songs like “De Guerre,” a booming triumph that travels from industrial rock into digicore. Guttural, half-spoken French vocals lean into the rage (“De Guerre” is French for “the war”), creating a gripping atmosphere that has you holding your breath until the final note.

Half of ANGIE is made up of larger-than-life songs with unexpected moves, surprising hits of emotion, and inspired juxtapositions you don’t think would hit but do. But the sparkle of an unexpected ending starts to fade when it happens on every song. “PINK LEMONADE” ditches its ruthless, in-your-face production (stacked vocals, blown-out bass, and whiplash tempo shifts) for a stripped-down jam that feels redundant next to the warped psychedelia of “Assis” just two tracks later.

Much of the tracklist flits between genres that some of Chicha’s indie-pop peers have already mastered (or monopolized). I can’t help but notice that her vocals often sound unfortunately similar to those of Billie Eilish—even if that’s just what her voice sounds like, it can create a lot of quick associations while listening. When they’re accompanied by lo-fi instrumentals—like on “Adore Me” or “Doesn’t That Scare You?”—it enters Happier Than Ever territory. Thicker, angrier electronic textures, like on “De Guerre,” echo Eilish’s “bad guy” era.

And it’s not just Eilish. There are shimmers of Remi Wolf’s early singles on bubbly, pop-forward tracks like “Athlete,” where blissful vocal runs and muted synth patterns hit a similar brain receptor as Rex Orange County or Hippo Campus did in 2017. Even flashes of the glitchy, strident breakbeats in “PINK LEMONADE” can feel uncannily 100 gecs. It may not be calculated, and it’s all easy listening, but it can feel elemental—a medley of sounds and sentiments heard before.

The sequencing of ANGIE is puzzling. Tracks like “Hold Me,” with its smooth bossa nova guitar and wispy vocals, though enticing and catchy on their own, sound out of place when following ones like “by Design,” one of the album’s strongest efforts. Phasing synths accompany the double-tracked vocals before exploding between verses, flanging into oblivion and joining with a techy trap backbeat. Before you can even get used to that, it fades out and turns into a twangy, Katie Gavin–meets–4 Non Blondes acoustic rendering that took five or six listens for me to fully appreciate. It’s so initially jarring that it could serve as a completely separate song (I initially thought it was one). But it’s become one of the album’s most-impressive moments, a big swing that pays off.

Chicha’s lyrics further reflect the album’s uneven cadence. Moments of playfulness sneak up on you and inject a sudden hit of energy. On “PINK LEMONADE,” she manipulates her intonation, stretching words into extra syllables with a near-robotic, oscillating melody. “Pass me the crusty bandy-aid and / Rush me to Kaiser Permanente, ya” still plays on a loop in my head. The warped pronunciation of “Bandy-aid” and the Kaiser Permanente name-drop is a fascinating, memorable moment. spill tab’s French lyrics also stick out, not just for being in a different language, but in her stirring delivery; in that vocabulary, there is a smoothness and comfort that’s sorely missing on tracks like “Adore Me.” She opts for simplicity on lines like “Can’t you act like you care / Cause you kill like a gun / And shoot at my heart / And that’s not fair,” but they lack the intensity heard in the Lana Del Rey-redolent music of the alt-pop world—lyrics that still pack a punch even in sparseness.

ANGIE is often catchy (see: “Athlete”), but it doesn’t feel like the same spill tab who made “Cotton Candy” and “Splinter.” Chicha shines brightest when she leans into the sounds only she can create. Here, it’s sounds that are scuzzy, grungy, massive, entrancing, and heavy but effortlessly light. Even with its inconsistencies, ANGIE invites the listener in, hinting at a greatness hidden in the fuzz and motif. The marble’s still unwieldy, but there’s no denying the David underneath.

spill tab Exists in Extremes on ANGIE

Claire Chicha’s full-length debut is an exercise in boundless creativity. Full to the brim of influences, its brightest moments get obscured by unfocused experimentation.