PREY//IV

During the eight years between her departure from Crystal Castles and the release of her debut album Prey//IV, Alice Glass established herself as a solo artist by reclaiming the trauma she experienced before and while she was in the project that made her an icon of darkly experimental electronic pop. The singles and EPs she released, as well as her advocacy for survivors of abuse (it's no coincidence that her debut single, "Stillbirth," benefitted the anti-sexual violence organization RAINN), built on her history instead of pretending to offer a clean slate. So did the sound of her solo music, which continued the combustive, eerie sound of her project -- with a few notable tweaks that are especially prominent on Prey//IV. Though the songs Glass wrote for Crystal Castles hinted at her suffering, the dense production work often obliterated her voice literally and figuratively. As a solo artist, her alternately delicate and furious vocals are still embedded within ghostly and wrenching electronics, but on songs like "Baby Teeth," they're much clearer, and she's able to shout down her foes. Glass' voice also comes through loud and clear on Prey//IV's songwriting. She adopts an abuser's viewpoint to deeply disturbing effect on "Pinned Beneath Limbs" and "Fair Game," where the accusations and red flags ("Would you like another pill? … I'm just trying to help you") feel like they're suffocating the listener. As much as she expands on the sound she helped popularize in the late 2000s and early 2010s, on Prey//IV Glass gives equal time to styles that surfaced later. She and producer Jupiter Keyes pair John Carpenter-like atmospheres with heavy, propulsive beats on "Witch Hunt," with results that sound like a chase scene set on a dancefloor. There's some hyper-pop plasticity in the tweaked sonics of "The Hunted" and "Suffer and Swallow," while "Everybody Else" subverts a more mainstream pop sound with broken music boxes and copious amounts of internalized self-loathing. Glass' anger is still raw, but her unapologetic stance on "Animosity" and "I Trusted You" feels galvanizing and prevents the album from becoming too bleak. Cathartic and confident, Prey//IV releases her pain with a diamond-like strength and clarity that is entirely her own. ~ Heather Phares