On
Chin Up Buttercup
,
Austra
's
Katie Stelmanis
reminds listeners that every breakup is its own kind of torture -- and chance to grow. On her previous album
Hirudin
, she handled heartache by burying herself in her art and lashing out with icy precision. She pairs ugly feelings and breathtakingly beautiful sounds just as skillfully on
Buttercup
, but this time
Stelmanis
focuses on transformation as much as devastation. The abrupt end of her three-year relationship left her not just heartbroken, but bewildered and infuriated, emotions she confronts much more directly than she did on
.
's opening trio of songs is as powerful as anything
has released: "Amnesia" sets the album's tone -- or rather, tones -- starting in the blast zone of loss as a heartrending piano ballad before flowing into ambient passages and the communal redemption of the dancefloor.
' intimate, immediate songwriting shines on "Math Equation," where she expresses love as a problem that can't be solved with elegantly simple metaphors ("One plus one cannot equal three... It's illogical, impossible") and unsparing honesty ("You said i needed my own friends/So i found them/Then you f*cked them") over hypnotic beats that echo
Feel It Break
. The time she spent composing scores in the wake of the breakup can be felt on "Siren Song," a sparkling showcase for her way with unearthly melodies and the operatic peaks of her voice.
Though the healing energy of
Madonna
Ray of Light
was among
' inspirations, she doesn't limit herself to the good vibes of an ecstasy-soaked rave. On
's dancefloor, sarcastic and hallucinatory moments bump up against ethereally beautiful ones. Moving from woozy, flutey tones to suffocating distortion, the album's title track captures post-breakup disorientation almost too well; "Fallen Cloud"'s eerily serene pulse embodies the seductive belief that "a few modifications here and there" could have prevented all this pain; and the whimsical bounce of "Think Twice" underscores the album's humanity even if it's not among the finest songs here. This vulnerability does lead to standouts like the aching, electro-choral acceptance of "Blindsided" and especially "Good Riddance," where
delivers some of her weightiest realizations ("All the time wasted longing for you/Was for nothing") in a soprano so light and unguarded that they blow away on the wind. By sharing the pieces of her broken heart,
finds new but entirely relatable reflections on moving on from loss. At its best,
proves that heartbreak, in all its chaos, can still sound like salvation. ~ Heather Phares