Album: Biig Piig - 11:11

Is there such a thing as a boundary between pop and alternative any more? The presence of strange characters like Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish and Lola Young in the mega mainstream suggests not – and so does trajectory of Jessica Smyth aka Biig Piig.

The Irish-born, Spanish-raised adopted Londoner came up through distinctly out-there artistic routes: as part of Lava La Rue’s NiNE8 collective, a diverse set of artists working across different media and touching on dance, rap, neo-soul and more, but held together by the very old school factor of physical proximity in shared studios. But the music Smyth makes is, by any standards, pop – and has racked up streams in the tens of millions already, over several years of development leading to this, her debut album proper.

The fact she’s spent that time building up to this seems to have worked in her favour: the immediate senses are of maturity, completeness and coherence. Almost off-puttingly at first, in fact, so slick is the delivery here and so easily do the modern disco grooves and fluid melodies slip by. That mid-tempo disco vibe is a sound we’ve become very familiar with via Dua Lipa and dozens of other stars – however, listen closer, and you’ll hear that Smyth and her collaborators are doing something altogether more delicate in the production and arrangement than you’re used to, the smoothness of her voice given a gleaming, elegant framework to float through.

Keep listening to the end, and the sophistication at play here really reveals itself, in a final trio of tracks that open up the palette massively into fusions of lo-fi indie, trip hop and soul, with even a hint of gospel right at the end. Once that’s hit home, and you hit play again on the album, suddenly the richness of the songwriting opens up: the personal stories of life in the city and self-realisation sneak up on you just like the grooves do – this is the antithesis of attention-economy barrage, it works entirely on its own terms and requires you to invest time to really appreciate it. So while the signifiers and the levels of success are pop, maybe that is the alternative it’s offering.

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