a brief reaction to Halsey’s work

 

I pressed play and let the stereo ladle sound out over the room. It wasn't my first listen, not by a long shot. Some of the songs were familiar and conjured up distant memories of walking through the halls of my favorite art museum in the early morning before the visitors arrived and my shift began. But the colors and tones of If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power departed from Halsey's previous projects.

The Room 93 EP had been a crushed haze of nicotine ash and pheromones. It was the beginning of the bluette tumblr girl life that populated the potent alt-pop Badlands universe. Badlands, their debut album, was like a night time drive through the outskirts of a dystopian town; long, cerulean hair flowing freely, hilarious and heartbreaking stories in the air, cheap gas station ice cream melting in the dawdling heat. "The city's ours until the Fall," they sing in New Americana. This lyric works for me on multiple levels. The fall can mean autumn, of course. But I prefer to lean into a Milton-esque fall-from-grace interpretation.

Their next project, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, hints at life after such a fall. This album was a nosedive into a world where the mighty crown of love has come crumbling down. At its surface, it's a bright and boisterous retelling of Romeo and Juliet, featuring full on fist fights and chaotic parties with complicated characters. Bold pop anthems, like Bad At Love, center lyrics that burst and bubble over in the delight of self-destructive tendencies and love-bombing impulses. 

Manic is my favorite of their discography. From country to indie to rock, this album is a sonic hopscotch that explores a gambit of subjects with a teaspoon of buoyancy and a dash of playfulness thrown in. But it gets dark, trust me--In Ashley, the opening track, they confess: "I only want to die some days." Despite these stark confessionals, somehow, the entire soundscape of this album bounces like a paint splatter.

In contrast, If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power is as rich as jewel tones, dark woods, and reclaimed fireplaces. The opening sounds of the album hit the silence like a scattering of beads across tile. And it's clear from the first few listens that this isn't a party album swollen with radio hits.

Halsey's vocals come crashing in through the opening music, interrupting the emptiness, displacing the lukewarm conversations and the perfect petunias preening on the centerpiece platters. The Tradition melts the glossy pyramids of ice at the party and pauses the meek conversations that are already backfiring from the fizzy wine spritzers. 

Suddenly there's a miraculous tragedy to everything in the room. Impressions of desire slip right past. Knowledge becomes a ghost. "All of this is temporary," they sing in the second track, Bells in Santa Fe. Flesh, bone, blood, and body. 

 

This album confronts themes like gender, spirituality, and body horror, specifically the horrors of birth and death. Moments of sweetness are there but they're gentle and somber. With such a hefty title, a heaviness filters down into the songs, even during the more danceable tracks like Girl is a Gun and honey. 

 

In conclusion, I hate conclusions. 

But Ya'aburnee, the closing track reminds us again as listeners that eventually birth spills into death and death cycles back into birth. Ultimately, Halsey seems able to rectify this endless loop through love. They sing: "I think we could live forever in each other's faces 'cause I always see my youth in you and if we don't live forever, maybe one day we'll trade places. Darling, you will bury me before I bury you."

 

And if they can't obtain the love that grants them an eternity, what kind of power does Halsey desire? There's the generative power to create something beautiful out of something painful, the power to transform and transmute the undesirable, to create a legacy. There's also societal power, the power to affect change, to move heaven, to raise hell, to wage a war or end one. 

 

The 13 songs of this album offer a rich gradient, one that centers the density of choice and experimentation. With soft lullaby-like vocals and sparse melodies pressed against shredded guitars and insistent percussion, Halsey tackles the tension between opposites, ushers us through the corridors of polarity, and mediates a balance that hums with the tremors of an approaching peace.