Ava made the transition to her teenage years with this record, and it shows. Her oblique lyrics work as allegorical paeans to typical aspects of teenage life—suffocating peer group alienation, a drive to be cool, the possession of a jaded seen-it-all-before outlook. She’ll often just repeat catchphrases (“drop the bomb, man”, “banging at the rhythm of my big bass drum”) that she’s picked up, which don’t ostensibly mean much, but serve as a fond reminder of how such things play an important part at that age: all the cool outsidery kids at school add jargon-filled catchphrases to their dialect. There’s no great lyrical depth at work here, other than a few barbed comments at Ava’s fellow teens, and nor should there be; her self-reflective Billie Holiday opus can wait until she’s at least 16. Read full article here.
