By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring quinn’s futurecasting pop record INTERSTATE 185 and waterbaby’s engrossing R&B EP FOAM!
quinn – INTERSTATE 185
Genre: Digicore, Hyperpop, Trap
Favorite Tracks: “my bad,” “camrymuzak,” “80mph”
quinn’s latest tape packs eight songs into only 10 minutes, and that tells you just about everything you need to know about the artist behind the project. The 18-year-old singer/rapper/producer has been releasing singles under various names since she was 14, collaborating with like-minded weirdo pop stars like Ericdoa, midwxst, and dazegxd and dropping a slew of mixtapes and solo LPs on her own. She’s put out a tape almost every month of 2023 so far, and the most recent full length, INTERSTATE 185, might be the best.
As the digicore and hyperpop spheres are becoming safer and more commercialized, quinn continues to find ways to push the boundaries of how a pop song can sound. INTERSTATE 185 features both her most eccentric and catchiest tracks yet. A track like “not again” rides a watery, distant beat and quinn’s vocals sound tinny while still conveying a smirking confidence that few of the other big names in the genre ever really sell. On “camrymuzak,” she outfits a trap beat with jazzy swells; “plato’s closet” flips a sugary beat more indebted to 1000 GECS than HEROES & VILLAINS, and bends it to fit under her autotuned bars. The highest point on INTERSTATE 185, though, is “my bad,” a song that genuinely sounds like it could be a modern top 40 radio hit. It’s as quirky and weird as anything in quinn’s back catalog, but her flow is incredible, and it manages to be both catchy as hell and delightfully off-the-wall. Pick up INTERSTATE 185 on Bandcamp and maybe we can help “my bad” get viral on TikTok or whatever.
Waterbaby – FOAM
Genre: Bedroom Pop, Indie Pop, Alt-R&B
Favorite Tracks: “Wishing well,” “Airforce blue”
If FOAM dropped a decade ago, Waterbaby would probably get lumped in with the indie R&B crowd alongside How to Dress Well and his ilk; these days, her closest comparison points are probably the inhabitants of Spotify’s Lorem playlist somewhere between Wallice and SZA. Both comparisons, while maybe superficially accurate, undersell her debut EP. The sound that the Swedish singer-songwriter cultivates on these five songs has precedents, to be sure, but it feels unique in the way she grafts them all together.
“Airforce blue,” Waterbaby’s debut single and FOAM’s opener, is a bit of a misdirection. Nothing else on the 10-ish-minute EP is quite as busy, mostly riding a wave of subdued beats and autotune over acoustic guitar. The beat on “Airforce blue” is jumpy and immediate, Waterbaby firing off memories of a past love in her higher register; by contrast, second single “911” is understated, its loping guitars and piano mostly serving as accents—it’s only in the song’s final seconds, after a false ending, that things pick up as staccato strings reprise the chorus melody. “Born too late” is similarly spare, an acoustic duet featuring Marcus White.
Album closer “Wishing well” is the standout—a beautifully layered cut that allows Waterbaby to show off her whole vocal range and a break from most of the rest of FOAM. For the most part, Waterbaby employs a smooth, unaffected voice that makes lines like “my ex fucked me up” hit just as hard as “guess I should be thankful for what I got through” (the latter of which helps her sell the hook of “911,” where she imitates a police siren over lush guitars). But “Wishing well” winds her voice through bubbly effects, and when she belts out in modulated cries, it’s deeply affecting. Combine that with the waterfall of keys that underline her voice toward the end of the song that gleam like diamonds under harsh light, lending the track an airiness not heard on the rest of FOAM, and you’ve got a stunner. FOAM is an essential Bandcamp cop, so you can say you liked her old stuff before she blew up.
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