Pixx - The Age of Anxiety

The Guardian 100

(4AD)

The title of 21-year-old Hannah Rodgers’ first album may seem like an attempt to capitalise on the zeitgeist but, satisfyingly, is actually taken from a 1947 Auden poem about industrialisation. There’s plenty more pleasingly cliche-defying action from Pixx here – who looks like a hip south London art school student but actually went to the Brit school, and who makes ethereal electro but performs it as if she might nut you at any moment. Perhaps the most obvious touchstone for Rodgers’ crisp and airy pop is British electronica of the late 90s, with the new-agey lyrics and otherworldly sonic motifs bringing to mind Zero 7, Dubstar, Morcheeba, and, occasionally, Lemon Jelly jolliness. Yet by flitting between a low, clear vocal, and something more urgent and old-fashionedly English, which evokes both 1960s pop and Tudor carols, Rodgers manages to dodge straightforward comparisons. It makes for a riveting and refreshing debut, which balances weirdness with sweet and soothing electropop joy.

Drowned In Sound 70

WH Auden’s The Age of Anxiety, the 1947 book-length and Pulitzer Prize-winning poem cuts at the heart of this documenting of change, as it attempts to charts one man’s quest to find substance and identity in a shifting and increasingly industrialised world. Auden’s poem inspired music: first, a symphony, The Age of Anxiety (Symphony No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra) by Leonard Bernstein; then a 1950 ballet by Jerome Robbins. Now, 21-year-old Hannah Rodgers, AKA Pixx, has taken the name for her debut album.

It’s a phrase Rodgers found in a notebook given to her by her brother, Luke. Without having read Auden’s poem the words have allowed Pixx the space for all kinds of ruminations.

‘I Bow Down’, the album’s opener and easily its stand-out single, hits a heavy punch. Its beats are incessant, as is Rodgers’ deep and soulful voice. Her vocals sound so full of ease, despite the churning rhythms underneath her, the whole sound forming a haunting synth drive. It’s a very danceable song. But you hardly get the sense that Pixx wants you to dance, or at least particularly hard. With “I salute your kindness / I bow down to your good will”, she is expecting more of a standing to attention. It’s a resounding sound to open a record, even its title succumbing to some greater force.

Without a doubt, Pixx can write a good pop song. ‘Grip’ and ‘Romance’ follow in a similar vein, the perfect balance of youthful lyrical querying and uncertainty thrashed up against a four-to-the-floor beat and wistful keyboard melodies. The electronica on this record leans just the right side of ethereal.

Having signed to revered indie label 4AD at just 19, Pixx’s 2015 Fall In EP was already showing tinges of anxiety-fuelled lyric sessions. Moving these vocals onto the faster-tempo, heavier-beat tracks has given her the backing to make a fun synth-pop with a lightning bolt of reverence, where the catchiness of these songs lies as much in the lyrics as in the relentless synth-pop melodies. These are lyrics which could be just as much about a personal fall-out as they could the end of humanity as we know it. Who says there’s a difference?

Holding down lyrical matter which often floats in the air are drum machines and timers, and the production of the whole record is incredibly clean. Sometimes a shininess works. At other points I can’t help feeling a little more griminess would be more apt for the subject matter.

After Pixx herself “bows down” on the first track of the record, on ‘Telescreen’ Pixx’s subjects “sink down” and “fall down” before, ultimately, returning to “bow down” much like she does. I can’t help wondering whether this repetition is self-referential tightness or merely a running-out of appropriate lyrics, as it is the one track which wanes unlike the others. For all the inviting things about straightforward pop, there is only so far you can take a metaphor about bringing yourself back down to Earth after having your head in the clouds.

More thrilling are the joltier moments on ‘Baboo’, or the heartfelt “I wish that I could dance like the rest of the girls” on penultimate track ‘The Girls’. A gentle, perfectly swaying motif warps into something a little more frenzied as it is moves into a hypnotic drive. Dancing won’t cure anxiety, and nor should it, but dancing to an artist as clued-up on lucid dreaming and the unconscious self might be a helpful enough place to start. I hope Pixx learns to join me.