The strongest songs on “Sucker” arrive when central relationships experience death by a thousand arguments, where embarrassing memories and indignities culminate into sorrow and resentment. With an ambient-inspired guitar lead and woozy synths, “Comeback” reminisces about how poor it can feel to try and capture the attention of someone you love. Lines about playing dead in a pool reverberate through the whole song, giving it a haunting sensibility.
Jilian Medford’s shift to a poppier sound is handled with confidence on her fourth record, which documents the giddy highs and reeling aftermath of a relationship. “Bloody Knees,” opens the album with a fear rooted in creativity and a new sense of self-preservation: “What if I die with this song in my head and I never get to sing it?”
On the title-track, with its slowcore acoustic guitars, Medford’s beloved spells her name wrong but it goes without mention. “Sucker” even manages to get away with pairing a burning hook melody with rote lyrics, one of the album’s sore spots. The closing ballad “Hard” has devastatingly simple language about having your thoughts occupied by someone bad for you: “Did you think of me on your way back to the city / While I was in the garden getting my hands dirty?”
“Your Spit” calls back to “Spit” from her 2018 release “Crush Crusher“, trading drifting surf-rock and the assumption a partner will leave for a hooky make out anthem about understanding that they still might take off, but going in for a kiss anyway. “Emergency Contact” suggests Beach House, but Medford’s voice itself breaks the trance, building from a breathy whisper to a darkly ironic scream as she reckons with codependency: “I don’t mind! I don’t mind!”
The messy, fun isn’t particularly cheery, but producers Isaac Eiger and Alex Craig manage to supply Medford with an anthemicness that’s needed. Much of this comes with drum programming—it starts nicely with a fill—that adds a jubilance to the consistent bummer of the lyrics, recalling the danciness of later Kississippi or the lushness of this year’s record by waveform*. The clearest analogous act for what IAN SWEET is doing is feeble little horse, where lead singer Lydia Slocum adds knotty, sickly details to the band’s garbled, infectious noise-pop. If that textured, dense indie pop is dime-a-dozen these days, Medford knows how to create images that ensure these songs stick.
The Fat Angel Sings 