Let’s Eat Grandma – I’m All Ears

Art Pop | Synthpop

86%

The unknown can be a scary place. It can be hard to embrace something new and different all at once without being slowly eased into it. I, Gemini – the debut album from teenage duo Let’s Eat Grandma – was just too much to take in. Even as a self-professed fan of weird music I found that the album was abrasively bizarre. But beneath that astonishing artwork, like some lost renaissance masterpiece, their new album I’m All Ears is a whole other story. The weirdness has been toned down and the pop sensibilities turned way up. It’s as though Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth are visiting pop stars from a not too distant future and their first record was a full-blown Marty McFly “I guess you guys weren’t ready for that yet” moment. This latest release goes easy on our primitive ears while still offering us a taste of something unique and refreshing.

There are still some unwelcoming missteps in places, most notably the ghastly ‘Hot Pink’, but for the most part it’s an enthralling listen. I’m dumbfounded at how far they have come in such a short space of time. Even the little interludes, which nearly always end up feeling unnecessary, have their own merit here, such as the electronic Eastern-tinged opener ‘Whitewater’. Album highlight ‘Snakes and Ladders’ combines a bluesy tone with what feels like the eerie soundtrack for some 70s psychological horror. ‘Cool & Collected’ explores airy psychedelic guitar sounds while the epic closing track ‘Donnie Darko’ is like the ‘Stairway To Heaven’ of synthpop, a grand and enduring statement that I can’t see anyone else in the genre matching anytime soon. If this is indeed a taste of what pop music will one day become, then despite all evidence to the contrary we may have a bright and wonderful future waiting for us on the other side after all.