Making music is a solitary affair for Alyssa Gengos. “I feel most comfortable when I’m completely alone,” she says of her process. The LA songwriter has been hunkering away since she was 14, making, producing, and releasing music in her bedroom under the moniker Kythira. It’s only now that she’s reverting to releasing under her own name, and Mechanical Sweetness feels like a step into the spotlight. Once again self-produced and self-recorded (apart from some live and animating drums by Sam Setzer on a few tracks), Gengos’ latest record is a neat little middle ground, sounding handcrafted and personally pained over, but equally lush and high end.
Having been making music since she was a teenager, Gengos knows her way around a hook, and Mechanical Sweetness is not without them. “Gothenburg English” lifts itself upwards from despair, Gengos declaring “You don’t make me feel like crying anymore” with a post-heartbreak hopefulness that seems to overwhelm her as she takes in details from the titular city (“I saw the goth girls gather round the ATM / On the corner they’re playing new wave inside a cafe next door”). With its gloopy bass and drum machines, “In the Real World” bounces about with its shimmering synths, getting stuck in your head like chewing gum in your hair.
Best of all is the title track, whose stunning chorus is almost a work of pop perfection thanks to Gengos’ keen sense of melody knowing exactly when to lift the arrangement. It’s the kind of moment that almost defines a record; here it captures that coldness of online social interactions but still offers a luminous hit you want to replay over and over. Gengos knows the power too, teasing it out slowly from languorous verses, and never overstating the rush the chorus brings.
Gengos also has an almost curious way of making her songs linger in your head. Her turns of phrase can also prick your ears, but more for them never quite following the expected path: “Nothing ever happens in a well-lit room / I think it every afternoon / But still I’m waiting” she remarks on “Good Light”, as if there’s something sinister but obvious we’re missing. Even when she sings the aforementioned hook of “You don’t make me feel like crying anymore,” she skips hurriedly over the “don’t,” making the line feel strangely pointed. An external producer might have tidied up moments like these, but equally it’s part of what gives Gengos’ music some of its individuality.
If it’s not the lyrics though, then it’s the production choices like the flash of pulsating synth at the mention of missing the sound of a guitar on “In the Real World” (which feels like an in-joke we’re missing a punchline to, as memorable as the moment is), or the way she fills even the background on busy arrangements with extra detail. The music here is lusher and glossier than her previous releases, but Gengos still sounds like she’s tinkering away for her own leisure.
After a slightly lumbering mid-section, the album hits its stride in the final trio of tracks (which includes “Mechanical Sweetness”, which really does warrant another mention for being such a marvellous song) and she sounds like she’s become fully formed in the spotlight. It still might be a solitary affair in her own home studio when she’s making her music, but now it also feels like the doors are open fully for us to come in and enjoy the end product.
