Forget Her Somehow by May the Queen

Where an intense and unconcealed fetishization of fame and an unrelenting commitment to emotional honesty combine, the melancholic alternative rock of Forget Her Somehow by May the Queen takes shape, an awkwardly earnest yet undeniably lovable testament to thoughtful, well-crafted outsider art. Minimal, memorable guitar riffs tell the harmonic story behind the album, braving the territory of abrasive jazz chords to capture the full scope of post-breakup gloom, combining with dispirited yet strong, catchy vocal hooks to flesh out the album’s core. Strikingly mature songwriting sets this formula up for success, breathing vitality into these glum components to animate sing-along choruses that could easily propel the singer into the arenas which they fetishize. However, the refusal to descend into escapism or sonic extravagance imbues the record with the type of charm and believability which definitionally never appears on pop radio waves, transmitting one person’s complicated, intense emotion with such clarity as to bring an intimacy to these moments of catchiness that we have trained ourselves never to expect.