Hit Me Hard and Softthe third album by Californian singer-songwriter Billie Eilish, ends with this very short sentence spoken on the fly: “ But when can I hear the next one? »
Three years after establishing herself as a classic pop performer with the album Happier Than Everher insatiable admirers expected nothing less from a double album: they will be satisfied with only 10 famous songs which form a bridge between the taciturn teenager of her electropop beginnings and the woman she has become, emancipating herself through these acoustic ballads that suit him so well.
The album opens with one of them, in fact. Skinny is about self-esteem and the challenge of accepting yourself as you are. “ Twenty-one took a lifetime / People say I look happy just because I got skinny / But the old me is still me and maybe the real me / And I think she’s pretty “, croons the 22-year-old musician over acoustic guitar notes, soft drums and string orchestrations played by the young Attacca Quartet, specializing in modern repertoire.
Skinny instantly refers to the chamber pop sound, almost jazzy at times, of Happier Than Everan album that breaks with the harsh electronic sound of the album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019) and the few recordings that preceded it, when his career was just beginning. The next one, Lunchwill cause chills for early fans: the electronic drums come back at a gallop in Eilish’s musical aesthetic, a frank groove sets in, driven by an effective bass line and piano-laden chords announcing the chorus.
She is not placed there, at the start of the album, at random, since her words will color everything that follows, while Billie Eilish expresses her love at first sight for a woman in terms that should extinguish the gossip machine: “ I could eat that girl for lunch / Yeah, she dances on my tongue / Tastes like she might be the one / And I could never get enough “. A little bomb that this song which, on the coda, points towards the dance floors and the following song, Chihiro — a title that will be read as a tribute to the character of Spirited Awaymasterpiece by animation master Hayao Miyazaki.
And like little Chihiro, Eilish also seems to share with us her own initiatory story on this third album, the best of her young but already fertile career, punctuated in particular by two remarkable original songs composed for the cinema, No Time to Die (for the James Bond of the same title, 2020) and What Was I Made For? (For barbie, 2023). On these two songs the performer revealed himself. The voice, muffled, the heart, knotted, the hand, trembling: more mature, Billie Eilish makes us forget the oversized sweaters and the fluorescent dye of the drooling teenager that she was and of whom she only recalls the taste for electronic rhythms on his new album.
Chihiro spins on a flowing house rhythm, the pretty melody of Birds of a Feather serves up a sweet, bouncy pop song, Wildflower falls back into the acoustic ballad, without however having the same impact as The Greatest, fragile and magnificent song that begins on tiptoe, progressing to the bombastic pop-rock finale.
The slobber resurfaces on the amusing one Love of my lifea little acoustic bluette with rhymes drenched in vitriol (“ It isn’t asking for a lot for an apology / For making me feel like it’d kill you if I tried to leave ”, she sings in the first chorus) before transforming into an electro-pop bomb, paving the way for The Dinerthe song on the album best reminiscent of the musician’s early sound.
The flawless finale, a clever amalgam of acoustic Billie and electro Eilish (Bittersuite And Blue), confirms that she and her brother Finneas form a formidable pair of authors, composers, directors and performers, who will soon be hitting the road again: the first concert of Billie Eilish’s new tour will take place at the Videotron Center on September 29.