“Everything I drop is a banger,” Kim Petras declares on “Uhoh,” a filter house-influenced track from her long-awaited debut studio album, Feed the Beast. And, for the most part, she delivers on that promise. From the verse to the pre-chorus to the instrumental drop and chopped-up vocal bridge, the song—which was produced by Ian Kirkpatrick, the knob-twirler behind Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now”—is stacked with hooks.
Much of the rest of Feed the Beast follows suit, including the Dr. Luke-helmed “Revelations,” which channels ’80s post-disco, complete with squelchy electric guitar solo, and the breezy “Coconuts,” a cheeky, pun-filled ode to Petras’s “margari-tatas.” Elsewhere, lead single “Alone” is built around a sample of Alice Deejay’s infectious “Better Off Alone,” though it leans too heavily on that late-’90s club hit’s synth hook to make much of a distinct impression of its own.
Alice Deejay’s track was influenced by the dance music of Petras’s native Germany, and when Feed the Beast draws more directly from the country’s happy hardcore and rave sounds on “Castle in the Sky,” or the Eurodance of Culture Beat and Jam & Spoon on “King of Hearts,” it helps distinguish Petras from so many other female artists who’ve rolled out of Dr. Luke’s studio. With its rollicking bassline, big house-y keyboards, and soaring chorus, the latter track is a bona fide banger in the mold of Snap!’s “Rhythm Is a Dancer” and La Bouche’s “Be My Lover.”
Too often, though, the album leans into contemporary pop, and “Hit It from the Back” and the title track sound like outtakes from Ke$ha’s Animal. While it’s admirable that Petras is willing to show her vulnerable side on the midtempo 808 ballad “Thousand Pieces” and the bubbly “Minute,” Feed the Beast plays it safe compared to Petras’s audacious Slut Pop EP. When Petras does get dirty on “Sex Talk,” it feels watered down: “I like sex talk, can you make my bed rock?”
Aside from the icy hyperpop track “Brrr,” Feed the Beast doesn’t, well, serve up the kind of red meat that one might have expected from the “Unholy” singer. Then again, perhaps a transgender pop star delivering a mainstream album filled with catchy, two-and-a-half-minute bangers is an act of subversion all its own.
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