PinkPantheress - Heaven knows

When PinkPantheress' music started gaining traction online just a couple of years ago, it was immediately obvious how unique her talent was. A strikingly impressive ability to snag samples from 90s dance classics, 80s Michael Jackson, ambient electronic works and more, and turn them into her own brand of melancholy emo jungle soundbites captivated audiences and took over For You pages globally.

Her DIY attitude, shrouded in mystery and revelling in the confinement of her bedroom's four walls, brought her to 2021's mixtape 'To Hell With It', but it's her sheer creativity, consistency and promise that shines on debut album 'Heaven Knows'.

While her eclectic sound couldn't really be pinpointed, she initially stood out as a jungle, drum'n'bass and garage revivalist; that takes on a whole new life now. 'Heaven knows' retains PinkPantheress' creative spirit but repackages it in a much slicker, Mura Masa-assisted production.

Some tracks, like first offering 'Mosquito', are classically PinkPantheress, featuring a 2-step beat and UKG staples like record scratches, smashes and Spanish guitar a la Craig David. Some hang onto that rapid beat but merge it with a dramatic organ intro, a guitar solo and a verse from Afrobeats star Rema ('Another life') or warp it into something both more R&B, interpolating British dance-rap chart-topper Example's 'Kickstarts' along the way ('Blue').

The more striking moments arrive when she ditches that almost altogether, though. The airy bubblegum rock of anthem 'True romance' captures teenage innocence (and hysteria) in a way we've never heard PinkPantheress before. Peppier and groovier, 'The aisle' with its darting synths and disco stabs is more dancefloor-ready than anything else here, then at the other end of the spectrum, 'Feelings' is a much darker club anthem in the album's final moments, and Kelela collaboration 'Bury me' offers something glitchy and sultry mid-way through.

Pulled together in an album format, we learn more about PinkPantheress on 'Heaven knows' than was ever possible on individual track drops. Although the melodramatic lyricism has always been present in her music, the consistent use of death (and more specifically, dying for love) as a subject matter here makes her My Chemical Romance influence ever clearer.

That theatrical lyricism can sometimes mean more stark tracks, like the frank commentary on a loved one's alcoholism in 'Feel complete', can fly under the radar. Other tracks like 'Blue' see her expand on the insecurities that kept her from revealing her face fully for the first year of her career, whereas 'Feelings' addresses her rapid rise to fame, and interlude 'Internet baby' hits back at the pressure stan culture puts on artists.

In the closing chapter, 'Capable of love' feels like the intentional end of the record. It's her longest song ever (at a whopping 3 minutes and 43 seconds) and features the most obvious nod to her emo favourites in its huge distorted crescendo, before the church bells at the end mirror the organ in track one, so it feels unnecessary to tack 'Boy's a liar Pt. 2', as wildly successful as it's been, on the end. It's the only part of 'Heaven Knows' that feels like an afterthought.

Still, the artists who can score such consistently viral hits and maintain their critical acclaim are few and far between, and for PinkPantheress to be of that calibre on her debut album is no mean feat. An entirely limitless record, it's always been impossible to put a finger on what PinkPantheress' sound is, but on 'Heaven knows', she blows the doors off.