As Primer, Alyssa Midcalf makes self-described “abject pop.” It’s a fitting tag, as on the surface her music might have all the radiant glow of 80s synth pop and electro indie, but lyrically she’s fighting with the demons in her head and her place in the world. Like the film whose title she takes her moniker from, Primer is a project for reckoning with one’s sense of morality and identity. On her 2019 debut Novelty she was almost despondent, even turning a cover of the Beach Boys’ “Til I Die” into a barren, hopeless landscape.
On her new album, Incubator, Midcalf hits a much better stride in both her style and her songwriting. Bass tones are clearer, more defined, and actively propulsive, and the whole album sounds like it came from the same place. The sleeker, more polished, and lush sound (thanks in part to Psymon Spine’s Noah Prebish who is co-producer here alongside Midcalf) matches the album’s title: these songs – some of which have been germinating since Midcalf’s late teenage years – feel wrapped in a warm, red glow. Though they reckon with hardships, the synths on the songs emit a comforting heat.
Indeed, Midcalf looks deep into the darkness at points here. The shimmering “If You Need Me” is a song of support, but equally a quietly desperate arm trying to reach out to a friend lost to depression. “When you wanna die you can call me any time / I know just what that’s like,” goes Midcalf in the chorus, but by the end she’s stuck in her own spiral of depressive thinking: “You’ll never escape / Your life is wasting away,” she intones, unclear if she’s singing it as a warning or a plea for help herself. Equally double-sided is following song “Giving Up”, which boasts a determined chorus: “I’m not giving up” over breathy pants and staccato pulses of synth strings before unravelling in the final moments; “I want to be free / Of what I keep inside / I want to leave the / Burdens of life behind”.
Whether Midcalf is tackling these suicidal ideations, societal expectations (“Impossible Thoughts”), or rejection and humiliation (“Just a Clown”), she has a way of making it feel like real and lived-in experience. On the latter half of the album she details an ending relationship, but in a manner that leans into the way some breakups are never cut and dry. “Some of the songs are very much non-linear because I view relationships and life as being non-linear,” she has explained. On “Hypercube” she’s pining with confliction (“Cause every little thing you say / I can’t believe… But I’ve got nothing now it’s over / And I want it back”), while on “Anything” she’s in full devotion mode (“I would do anything for you”). Again, it helps paint Midcalf and her storytelling as being messy and human.
Sometimes the story is ambiguous, like on the slow and turgid “Things Fall Apart”, which is like a dream sequence playing from a film projector. Sometimes the tales are underdeveloped, like on the somewhat obtuse “You” where each verse feels like a small act to a play; by the end it’s almost like an unresolved short story, and could do well to just build upwards and outwards.
The same could be said of the sonics. The spacey ambient outro and the metallic clang and grind at the start of “Hypercube” are differentiating sound worlds, and it would have been great if there were more of that diversity of sound on Incubator, but at the very least they offer avenues for Midcalf to go down in the future.
At the end of Novelty, Midcalf was asking herself, “When it’s all been said and done / Who is this person I’ve become?” Incubator is the first part of the answer to that question, drawing on negative life experiences and learning from them. Final track “Warning” is a buoyant moment of joy and growth, Midcalf now knowing how to recognise red flags in others and also herself. “I would have died for you / It’s true / But that’s a warning,” she advises. The song’s tone is upbeat, and in this instance it matches the lyrical content. No longer abject, it’s a moment of pop bliss for us, but also – and more importantly – for Midcalf herself.
