Girl Violence sets introspective hunger to mussed up New Wave
Mikaela Strauss’ third album as King Princess is the product of a tumultuous period — the 26-year-old broke up with her relationship, her label, and her residence in Los Angeles in a short period of time, resettling in Brooklyn before diving in to process what she’d been through and prepare for whatever might be next. Girl Violence, the result of that introspection, announces Strauss’ new chapter with songs that bloom and twist around themselves, echoing the fear and delight and increasing clear-eyedness that came along with each fresh experience.
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“Nobody mentions that girls could be violent,” Strauss murmurs on the opening title track, digging in her heels as a relationship is clearly falling apart, its synth-borne ghosts already coming to life. When its beat does finally kick in, she becomes introspective, her half-swallowed alto repeating “And I guess it’s true love” like a mantra before uttering her reasoning — “’Cause it truly fucks with me.” In a way it’s a continuation of “Let Us Die,” the romantic-apocalypse cliffhanger that ended her 2022 album Hold On Baby; but it also shows how Strauss has changed since then, becoming more self-preservationist even as she’s thrilling in the idea of the unknown.
On Girl Violence, Strauss drenches her songs in feedback and languor, adding heat to her expressions of desire and comfort to her feelings of anxiety. “Jaime” stretches out schoolyard sing-song, turning it into a scrawled mash note to an impossibly hip chick (“If you told me I’m cool, I’d collapse,” Strauss confesses, her voice breaking as ominous drones rise up). Some of the album’s best moments come when Strauss musses up New Wave’s gelled perfection, creating songs that possess an Earth-swallowing hunger: “Cry Cry Cry” is a synth-pop kiss-off that recalls Night Time, My Time-era Sky Ferreira where Strauss rages at a frenemy who took the latter part of that love-hate portmanteau a bit too far, while “Slow Down and Shut Up” turns long-distance dirty talk into cause for a triumphant closing-credits anthem. Girl Violence is the sound of Strauss figuring things out, with any answers she arrives at being illuminated by the openness to herself she’s cultivated along the way.
