Illuminati Hotties : Power
True to its name, Sarah Tudzin’s Illuminati Hotties project has always felt like indie rock’s equivalent of Malcolm in the Middle’s Dewey—an accomplished artist masked by irreverence. Whippersnapper wordplay, relentlessly sugary hooks and a “tenderpunk” take on angstier sounds feels very much like a side character to Tudzin’s more serious job as a studio wizard. Yet even if the band does count as a mere side hustle, the praise the audio engineer has garnered from her own and others’ work speaks volumes—all accomplished records that have infiltrated the makeup of the latest power-pop-heavy outing.
The success is hardly surprising from the producer of the Best Alternative Music Album at 2024’s Grammy awards (for boygenius’ The Record), with Tudzin’s expertise covering projects from The Armed to Weyes Blood. Her nous for big moments, just-right jangly guitars and booming drums are fortunately all over contemporary music, with Illuminati Hotties serving as the playground to experiment with tones, vocal chops, biting jokes, and getting out of record contracts, namely with the aptly named Free I.H: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For. This mixtape showed the brazen “fuck around and find out” approach Tudzin has taken since Kill Yr Frenemies to implement any musical style to great effect, straddling snarly hardcore rippers and tender, catchy tunes. And while Let Me Do One More was also humorously titled, it showed a more straightforward songcraft that’s now been made bigger, softer, more joyful and somber alike on Power: the closest to a consistent package the band has delivered.
Single “Can’t Be Still” introduces hilarious little hallmarks that make up Hotties’ personality. The opener’s alt-rock guitars and electronic drums sounds like a sarcastic pastiche full of whistles, the popping sound of flicking your finger through your cheek, and “ah ahhs” that call back to “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA”. Tudzin’s masterful handling of colloquialisms follow in the staccato-sung “I Would Like, Still Love You” and the crunchy catchiness of “The L”. Arthur Russell gets rhymed with “muscle” at one point and “YSL” makes chaotic rhythmic changes go another yard with stretched, filtered and chipmunked vocals in only two minutes. Clearly, the playfulness of piecing songs together from Eureka moments in the studio (or in an Airbnb in Joshua Tree, in Power’s instance) still makes itself known.
But Tudzin was mostly on a mission here to capture an unapologetically loud and structured pop rock foundation. It worked, albeit lacking some of the project’s original freewheeling whimsy. “Falling In Love With Somebody Better” is hard to separate from a Fountains of Wayne deep cut that makes pop writing seem like a walk in the park, while “Throw (Life Raft)” would be a soft rock smash if it was 2002. In Tudzin’s own words, recapturing Weezer’s layered simplicity was a must, “just drive and volume, nothing crazy”, as if Rivers Cuomo himself penned the power chord hits of “Didn’t” or threw in the miniature solo on “What’s the Fuzz.” The former’s onomatopoeic refrain discusses the album’s fraught creation—something the Weezer frontman has acknowledged throughout his career from Pinkerton’s college days to karaoke novelty—with this being just one example of a song encapsulating its theme rather than a flurry of ear-pricking sonic ideas.
Similarly different, it’s hard to ignore the highs and lows within Power’s lyric sheet as, understandably, previous tongue-in-cheek sarcasm has been dialed back to make way for honest reflections of grief. “Rot” is a hushed number discussing feelings of love and loss equally well, and “Everything Changes” seems intentionally brief to mimic the fleeting, recurring moments of reflection that surface after a personal loss. For all the melancholic shifts though, the blooming warmth of a relationship also shines through. “I don’t like laying around, but you like sleeping in, so I like sleeping in now” (“Sleeping In”)phenomenally coins joyful cohabitation into a one-liner, as well as being a reminder of the cheeky refashioned sentences on “freequent letdown”: “I’m always letting everyone down, I’m always letting everyone know I’m down.” Plus when its harmonized “ooh ooh… yeeeeaaaAAHH!” backing vocals appear, not far from a cutesy doo wop take, the singer’s never sounded happier.
Maximalist radio pop-rock is a relic that should always be taken with a pinch of salt. In putting that sound front and center, Power is perhaps the first showcase of Tudzin’s well-tuned writing credentials rather than her experimental production, with only a few fun-loving aural tricks trickled through to retain the essential Illuminati Hotties flavor. But it’s mostly the experience that governs these songs: in finding power through life’s ups and downs and massive choruses, clearly the album is also true to its name.
Label: Hopeless
Year: 2024
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Illuminati Hotties : Power
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