- What’s your experience of living in a digital world? Blissful euphoria? Obsession? Fear of missing out? Connection? Isolation? Confusion and frustration? Utter apathy? All of the above? I’m pretty sure that Sui Zhen has a perspective, even if I can’t quite tell you what it is. She’s been sifting the digital detritus left in the wake of our wired lifestyle and gathering the thoughts in musical form on her new record. In a couple of words, what are those thoughts? She says it’s Losing, Linda, but I don’t know, it kind of feels like winning.
In 2015 Sui Zhen reinvented herself as an electro-pop, social media goddess, the eponymous Secretly Susan of her LP that year. In it she cruised a brittle, confected world, presented as a syrupy sweet, echoing pop music: a satirically over-the-top illustration of our lives as online beings. Her new record, Losing, Linda finds Zhen again exploring the neon surfaces of that reality, still searching for cracks in the facade. This album’s worth of electronic pop is her uncanny valley and home to its most uncanny heroine, Linda, the rubbery-skinned, vaguely disturbing robot-person adorning the cover.
The halting, deadpan lyrics of Natural Progression are supposed to be like Linda is speaking through Zhen and speaking to her too. She assures us all, in fact, that there’s some sort of transformation going on, a process of machine-learning which seems to culminate when “you see me change, into you”. It’s a natural progression, don’t worry, and of course -as we’re potentially replaced by androids- that’s not at all reassuring, but at the same time, the slowly pulsing, medicated pop make it seem kind of inevitable and kind of okay.
It’s a sensation which recurs a few times on this record and if you’ve ever heard experimental pop songstress Laurie Anderson’s O Superman you may well find it and much of Losing, Linda’s style quite familiar. Zhen cites it as a big influence and it’s easy to see why. Anderson’s epic ode to the consolations of plastic, consumer culture in the face of probable annihilation at the hands of the military-industrial complex simmers with a very similar sense of unease.
I’m not sure Zhen is quite as thorough-going in her vision, but who is? Her analysis of the human condition circa 2019 is a bit more nebulous, but potentially more joyous. A celebration of disconnected anonymity on a trip to Japan surges euphorically on mid-album highlight Matsudo City Life. Interestingly, despite its five-one, synthwave bassline the song has a strangely Cranberries feel, which is indicative of a diversity of sound swirling through the pop sweetness and reverb-heavy production. The stylistically quick-silver switches may be another throwback to that no-wave era of Laurie Anderson’s sound, which was extremely eclectic even as it glued everything into a pop whole.
This is deftly illustrated by the unexpected, elevator-bossa-nova of the very next number, I Could Be There. The little latin groover is another chance to sway with uncertainty. The easy-listening artificiality is deliberately shallow, but Zhen plays it off against lyrics that are emotionally complex -a kind of high-stakes relationship negotiation, possibly with a partner, possibly with her mother- but ultimately abstruse. It's a bit awkward to talk about, because I know that Zhen's mother passed away as she was making this record and that must be devestating to deal with, but if that is what she's dealing with here it's hard to know; as Zhen herself sings “it won’t complete the picture of just where I fit in.”
There’s quite a bit of consolation for this intellectual coyness in the music itself, as she speeds through her stylistic flipbook. Mountain Song is classic ‘60s pop full of Bacharach And David romantic yearning and possibly one of the most honest songs on the record, with its simple desire to abandon mental baggage and live in the moment. The same can be said of the warm, feminist empowerment of Being A Woman which puts a slow but purposeful electro-funk to work in a simple self-affirmation anthem. I suppose all the reverb was begging for a bit of dub-reggae and that arrives on Different Places with themes of emotional connection and reconciliation that feel entirely appropriate.
For all the genuine, emotional warmth you’ll find welling out of the back half of Losing, Linda, Sui Zhen abandons it on final number Perfect Place. The monotone vocals of her robot persona return along with a fruitless search for the perfect place, somewhere beyond the uncanny valley. “I just can’t explain it, it does something to me!” proclaims Zhen, while popping and locking, presumably. Honestly, I don’t know why she bothers. Losing, Linda is at its best when producing every shade of warm, wonderful pop it can imagine and, bizarrely, it’s the artificiality itself which feels forced. This is reinforced by the liquidly delicious, analogue bassline dancing out of the end of that final song.
From what I’ve read Sui Zhen is very keen to promote a rigorous, intellectual framework for this record and that’s something I’ve had a hard time engaging with. From what I’ve heard, this a rather wonderful and nuanced pop record that is extremely easy to enjoy. It seems unlikely that the lesson of Losing, Linda could be as simple as, ‘hey, it’s pop music, enjoy it, but... So, if we’re being marked on this, then like Linda, I’m losing, but it really doesn’t feel like it.
- Chris Cobcroft.