There’s recently been some discourse in comic book spaces about the coining of the term ‘premiseslop’. It essentially refers to a run that has a good initial idea, but struggles to tell any kind of meaningful story with it and ends up spinning its wheels. The term itself seems largely disliked for how condescendingly denigrative it is, but there’s a kernel of truth to the sentiment. If something has a cool hook, you want it to blossom out beyond its pitch, and it can be genuinely frustrating when that doesn’t happen and the final product suffers so much for it.
Coincidentally, the same sort of thing tends to happen in music. You get a band or artist presenting their craft as new or innovative, only for it to contain enough to fill a short paragraph of copy, let alone a full release, let alone a full career! And it’s almost always the ones whose social media presence would suggest they’d rather be an influencer than a musician. It’s why we’ve ended up with so many of these nu-gen chancers being obsequiously platformed, despite their ‘alternative’ spirit being relegated to aesthetics and maybe a flimsy thesis, if you’re lucky.
Harpy isn’t the worst of them, but she might be the most representative of what ‘premiseslop’ in these circles looks like. This EP is apparently an exploration of the Seven Deadly Sins and what it means to be human through Harpy’s transgressive lens; juxtaposed with how she’s probably best known for a fanbase dubbing her ‘Goth Metal Mommy’, and you feel any enthusiasm immediately bottom out. Not only is this an artist defined by both a ringing endorsement of style-over-substance work and weird, parasocial fandom, she’s clearly playing into it. A song like Call Me Mommy simply doesn’t exist otherwise, entirely predicated on fan service to an audience who wants to be used by alt-girls. If that’s you, more power to you, but you can’t be unaware of how narrow any creative range is made from it.
And when that’s clearly positioned as VII’s defining, keystone moment, you have to wonder what’s left. The concept of sin and blackened dress to couch it aren’t combative bedfellows. Among the darker alt-pop cache, too, Harpy doesn’t have that many ideas of her own. It might actually be Call Me Mommy that’s the most singular, for its dark-club throb and vocal croak that behoove its dominatrix principals. Beyond that, VII’s impressiveness is mostly capped at its fidelity and how it is a rather expensive-sounding listen. At the same time, though…aren’t all of these? It’s not a standout quality that VII possesses; if anything, it’s just another way for it to assimilate into the morass of dark-alt soloists with a brand limited to that and that alone.
‘Limited’ really is the best way to sum up Harpy’s repertoire, too. Her particular stash of plodding, industrial synths already has a flexibility issue, and there’s very little work put in to alleviate that here. Opener Inferno feels particularly stodgy in that regard, where elegance is an afterthought in stitching together its electro-pulse and the alt-metal of the chorus that lands at a totally different tempo. At least Torture fares better from the same formula, thanks to being more hardened overall and featuring Harpy’s most gruelling vocal performance on the EP. But with the likes of Last Time and Precious that are more ponderously hollow than insidious or heated, you’re left to wonder where the hook even is.
By the time you get to Bitter at the end—the clanking, buzzing finale that pulls precisely nothing back—the potential for Harpy to build upon her foundation has fizzled into nonexistence. The fact that seems to happen with depressing regularity makes it all the worse, too. VII, at the end of the day, is no different from its other nu-gen contemporaries, carefully curating the aesthetic and theme to hide how the music is the briefest flash in the pan. It’s just exhausting to see the same superstar rollout given to artists like this who can’t back it up beyond a step or two. But it’ll always sell, so…fill your boots, I suppose. It’s still the ‘MJ becomes Venom’ of alternative music.
For fans of: Cassyette, carolesdaughter, Mimi Barks
‘VII’ by Harpy is out now.
Words by Luke Nuttall
