4AD

Erika de Casier isn’t searching for perfection – she’s just trying to show you where she’s at right now. The 33-year-old Danish singer, songwriter and producer built a cult following with her 2019 debut album Essentials, and emphatically built on that “cult” designation with 2021’s Sensational, her first album for 4AD. In the past few years, she’s performed at some of the biggest festivals in the world, written for pop stars and sung on hyped dance tracks. But when she ushers you into the expanses of her third album—with a coy “Welcome… it’s gonna be a lot of fun”—she’s inviting you to leave any crass The Nordics’ Next Big Thing or Rising Alt-Pop Star epithets at the door, next to your shoes and coat. De Casier may have won a lot of new fans in the past three years, and a lot of high-profile collaborators, but as this album’s title confirms, she’s the same old Erika de Casier. Still.

As a Dre- or JLo-ism, Still’s title is a wry joke, continuing the braggadocious naming conventions of de Casier’s first two records. Really, it refers to the fact that Still represents a snapshot of de Casier’s life and creative process at this point in time: her increasing proficiency as a producer, which sees her producing other voices (They Hate Change, Shygirl, Blood Orange) for the first time, and working with live musicians in addition to samples; and her continued exploration of what it means to fall in and out of love in the 2020s. Still charts the ups and downs of a relationship, from the puppy love phase through to malaise and heartbreak, while acknowledging that love is a hard thing to find in a world marked by disconnection and career instability.

All of this is to say that Still is classic de Casier – a hard thing to say about the third album of basically any artist other than de Casier, who hit on an idiosyncratic mix of luxuriant electronica and moonlit R&B with her earliest singles, and has spent the years since drilling further into that one-of-a-kind sound, discovering new facets of it with each successive record. “There’s a part of me that wants to satisfy the people that know my music. I don’t want to change too much, but I also want to feed my need to develop, and not be stuck,” she says. “But I’ve found that it’s hard to escape your own sound.”

De Casier fuses those two warring impulses into an album that’s indelible and richly textured, the softness of de Casier’s music still belying an impact well above its weight class. After making Sensational during the height of the pandemic, de Casier wanted her follow-up to be “more open to collaboration.” N, co-producer of Essentials and Sensational, returns here; added to the fold are Jonathan Jull Ludvigsen, Carl Emil Johansen, Niels Kirk, Christian Rhode Lindinger, Nick León, Kirsten Nyhus Janssen and Tobias Sachse, adding live drums, synths, guitar, bass and more to the mix. These musicians, as well as de Casier’s chorus of friends who sing and rap on the record, add a jolt and crackle to her world; where those first two records felt like dispatches straight from the recesses of de Casier’s brain – intimate thoughts slinking through the ether at 2am – Still feels like a conversation between friends in the backroom of a crowded bar.

Those friends embolden de Casier to deliver some of her most emphatic songs ever. She borrows Shygirl’s icy touch and León’s fondness for sensual irregular rhythms on “Ex-Girlfriend,” an aqueous R&B-reggaeton track whose taunting lyrics are a sharp contrast to de Casier’s sweet vocal: “When your phone rings/Do you wish it was me?/With my cute face/That showed up on your screen?/There’s a reason I’m your ex-girlfriend.” The funky “Ice,” a collaboration with They Hate Change, sees de Casier moonlighting as the Tampa duo’s third member, flipping a classic hip-hop trope (“Ice–you put it all on me,” she sings) into a comment on a frustratingly noncommittal person. On introspective cuts like “Twice” and “Anxious,” Ludvigsen’s delicate drumming resonates like the patter of rain on a window, the backdrop for some of de Casier’s most heart-wrenching breakup songs.

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Foreword

2021

4AD

2021 saw 4AD release debut albums by Dry Cleaning and Spencer., plus saw the return of Tune-Yards and the the first releases on 4AD by Erika de Casier and Helado Negro. Explore these albums, and many more, in this year's Foreword...