Though PinkPantheress’s Heaven Knows is dotted with samples across its runtime, the British singer’s debut album nonetheless presents an original, unique vision. A departure from her 2021 mixtape To Hell with It, which is built around succinct, TikTok-ready songs and easily recognizable sonic quotations from various U.K. dance cuts, Heaven Knows is a full-throated pop album with an eye on contemporary trends.
“The Aisle” is as good a bellwether as any to determine if fans will take the leaps that PinkPantheress is asking of them. It’s more robust than anything we’ve heard from her before, with glossy disco inflections and drum work, and layer upon layer of jittering synths. The track’s invocation of disco and nod to 2Pac’s “California Love” are in service of mainstream pop consumption rather than a revivalist genre experiment. Its pastiche is certainly less “cool,” but PinkPantheress delivers it with a surprising ease. And she has the beats to back it up.
The album’s detail-rich production choices, courtesy of co-producers like Greg Kurstin and Mura Masa, achieve a tonal cohesion throughout. Many of the songs feel like 3D versions of PinkPantheress’s previously 2D sound. “Ophelia” is awash in cinematic details that help tell its story, which is set in the immediate aftermath of a woman’s drowning by her lover. Meanwhile, at almost four minutes, the Flume-esque “Capable of Love” feels epic by PinkPantheress’s standards, filled with expansive drum fills, EDM-style drops, and fizzy electric guitars.
Opener “Another Life” is laced with soulful organ and record scratches, evoking a melancholic longing that contrasts nicely with PinkPantheress’s flighty vocals and the bouncy disposition of the music. A similar yearning can be found on the standout “Feel Complete,” which expresses the artist’s discontent in dealing with an alcoholic partner, backed by curling strings, loops of classical guitar, and DJ Mustard-esque chants. These songs evolve the emotionality of PinkPantheress’s testimonials from the dispassionate to something approaching sweeping.
Sometimes, the sentiments of these songs can be a little too grandiose. PinkPantheress often presents herself as a magnet for mild misfortune, cataloging inconveniences and frustrations with an offhand charm. “It’s one of those unfortunate things/That bad things always happen to me,” she coos on “The Aisle.” But when she suddenly pivots to melodramatic fatalism on tracks like “Mosquito” (“I just had a dream I was dead/I only cared ‘cuz I was taken from you”) or “Nice to Meet You” (“I pray that I’ll die before my baby”), it can feel unearned.
That PinkPantheress’s approach to singing is so casual, and her music generally frothy, makes the blithely referenced death and morbidity throughout Heaven Knows seem trivial. Perhaps, though, she’s an embodiment of a youthful, post-postmodern state of mind, where the idea of mortality floats around as inconsequentially as notions of love.
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