In ‘Louder, Please’, Rose Gray stays in touch with the dance-pop soundscapes she fell in love with, eventually making her own rendition of said soundscape. It’s an amplification and extension of her past EPs, bringing more splashes of color to the melodies, production, and performances that work wondrously as a result.
Rose Gray is someone whose yearning within the dancefloor clearly has resonated for her, where the stash of 80s to 2000s pop music from the likes of Kylie Minogue, Robyn, and Madonna whose melodies are driven to work within clubs has sparked the interest of her to delve into that same route, eventually taking her pop star aspirations to light. Throughout her built-up EPs thus far, that mostly rings true as Rose Gray brings her pristine vocal chops and yearning writing touches into an assortment of electronic beats to mostly tasteful results. This acts as growth for wherever she’ll lead next time, one that definitely showcases throughout her debut album, ‘Louder, Please’.
Within this first record of hers, ‘Louder, Please’ generally brings up an amplification and expansion from her usual sonic and vocal palette, allowing her to jump across various styles of dance music and vocal registers but keeping things coherent for the most part, never sacrificing the consistency of the sonic ideas that Rose Gray approaches in the record. It’s even helped that the producers behind her provide a lot of sonorous textures in these tunes, most notably Pat Alvarez, Sega Bodega, Shawn Wasabi, Sur Back, amongst others. It leads to the project carrying a lot of color around it, providing striking tunes along the way. The gloriously buzzy grooves that lead to the ridiculously manic hook of ‘Wet & Wild’, the euphoric synth swells that compliments Rose Gray’s soaring singing on ‘Tectonic’, the grandiose strings and operatic vocal runs that allow ‘Angel Of Satisfaction’ to sound incredibly immense, the summery electronic bounce that wraps around the flirtatious tone of ‘Switch’, the atmospheric tune that works effectively with the contemplative spoken word of ‘Hackney Wick’ before bringing in breakbeat percussion and soaring strings to end the song, the low-key house beat of ‘Everything Changes (But I Won’t)’ that provides a tender tone from the rest of the other songs, and the instrumental swells of ‘Louder, Please’ that interestingly ends the record as it builds up its melody with repeated vocal refrains, gleaming synth and violin swell, and spare percussion that tousles at the very end.
The overall thematic conceit might be one that Rose Gray is familiar with, but it still works solidly within her debut album, essentially focusing on that yearning within the dancefloor, where the love is felt might dissipate and give some ache at the end of the day, but it doesn’t really stop her to find that feeling that’s she finds charmed by in the dancefloor. What does manage to at least make this feel captivating is how it focuses that yearning mainly in that club framing, one where Rose Gray finds herself a lot of her confidence and joy despite the pang that she will feel every single time the sense of romantic yearning doesn’t work, especially as the music, atmosphere, and people that are there is enough for her to come back. Like a place that she belongs to no matter what happens.
While there is a lot of splendid color spreading through this album, it’s not exactly perfect, with most of the flaws pointed toward some of the melodies and some mixing that doesn’t lend a lot to some of the songs. Most notably with cuts like the snobby brashness that doesn’t come through on ‘Damn’, the bustling maximalism of ‘Free’ that didn’t stick the way it should, the obvious sampling of Eiffel 65’s ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ on ‘Just Two’ that undercuts its solid groove and hushed vocal tinges, the middling hook that ruins the well-produced beat of ‘Party People’, and the garish mixing and underwhelming melodies that makes ‘First’ a dud to go through.
Beyond that, ‘Louder, Please’ is a debut album that manages to stick the landing in capturing more of that dance-pop soundscape that Rose Gray is astonished by, and eventually making it her own. Carried through with striking vocals, colorful production, varied melodic directions, and yearning writing that emphasizes how much that dance-floor setting is important to her. Brimming the club with pulsing rhythms, allowing the heart to pulse even louder.
Favorite Tracks: ‘Wet & Wild’, ‘Tectonic’, ‘Angel Of Satisfaction’, ‘Hackney Wick’, ‘Switch’, ‘Everything Changes (But I Won’t)’, ‘Louder, Please’
Least Favorite Track: ‘First’