On her first two albums, 2019’s Essentials and 2021’s Sensational, Danish R&B singer Erika de Casier displayed a preternatural sense of creative and personal self-assurance. Her lyrical modus operandi fell somewhere between sly defiance and cool detachment as she flexed her career ambitions while shrugging off bad dates. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that de Casier was launched into international recognition in 2023 by co-writing K-pop group NewJeans’s “Super Shy,” a song about overcoming insecurity.
With Still, her first album as a newly minted hitmaker, she unravels her typically unbothered persona, expressing a newfound degree of doubt and romantic turmoil. The album roughly tracks the course of a tumultuous relationship from nascent flirtation to post-breakup reconciliation, placing de Casier in unfamiliar emotional territory.
This arc begins in typical de Casier fashion with “Home Alone,” a showcase of her signature retro-futuristic production grounded in the sounds of Y2K-era R&B. The detailed instrumentation, from pulsating orchestra hits to accordion, provides a cushion for a delicately delivered invitation to a potential lover. The song embodies one of de Casier’s and the album’s strengths: an expert balancing of sumptuously smooth and taut, staccato rhythms.
On lead single “Lucky,” de Casier offers another addictive pairing of elements, her hushed vocals gliding over skittering drum-‘n’-bass percussion. Her performance situates her in a dream state separate from the frenzy that surrounds her, but the refrain of “I need ya” sets the stage for an album’s worth of pining.
De Casier’s ear for hypnotic rhythms makes for a dynamically paced early run of tracks, alternating between the mellow soul of “Ice,” featuring Tampa rap duo They Hate Change, and the Balearic beat of “Test It.” It’s telling that the first featured guests on a de Casier album—in other words, the first disruption of her solitary world—coincides with lyrics about losing control: “Falling harder every time you ghost me/Next minute in your arms like it’s all gone.”
To underscore de Casier’s ambivalence, “Test It” brings together ’80s synths and an Ibiza-style house beat as she sings about navigating her life. Each fluctuation in pace and mood is measured, as is every production choice; it’s no mistake that the song’s style, a mix of corporate realism and escapism, merges the disparate sounds of a mall and a club on the Mediterranean Sea.
Toward the end, Still slows into a string of chillwave tracks about romantic upheaval. The titles of “Anxious” and “Toxic” leave little to the imagination, but the songs themselves offer candidly wounded lyricism: “Ashamed to say it, but I always gave a damn what you think.” Similarly, “My Day Off,” complete with crunk-era synths and horns, follows in the tradition of songs such as Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” and Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s “Telephone” in that it’s as much about escapism as it is about her personal woes.
Appearances by fellow R&B experimentalists expand the album’s scope further, with Shygirl contributing a sultry verse to “Ex-Girlfriend” and Blood Orange bringing heartbroken spoken word and harmonies to “Twice.” These tracks are more predictable than de Casier’s best work, but they offer equally complex sonic patchworks to immerse the senses. Even as de Casier explores the experience of uncertainty, she exhibits confidence in her identity as a singularly detail-oriented artist.
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