Now that she’s at the end of the
K-12‘s era (you should really watch this movie available
on youtube), Melanie Martinez released a few
months ago an EP entitled After
School.
Composed of seven new tracks he faced a really mixed reaction. It
seems like a part of her listener are now bored of being again and
again reunited with her gloomy and childish universe so typical of
her.
But can we criticize an artist for her specific genre? Did we ask AC-DC to make some softer songs? I don’t think so…
However, it is true that after listening a few times to the EP, it goes around in circles. Most of the songs are monotonous, without real climax or kicking chorus, sometimes even really similar to other tracks from older albums (for example, Notebook sounds a lot like Detention). If you can still save Numbers, which mix hip-hop and rock vibes, far from Melanie’s usual work, you can listen to the rest without real enthusiasm. Too fast to be a ballad but too slow to properly dance, Glued is, for example, a flop, but the EP is a bit upgraded by the tracks Brain & Heart or Field Trip and its Spanish part, trying to diversify the melodies.
To be short, the usual Melanie Martinez‘ universe is here, absolutely coherent with her work but the sounds struggle to catch the listener’s attention and to stand out from the previous albums. Nonetheless, her last video clip The Bakery suggests a new era way more exciting, in a genre a bit different from school this time.
