Score: 8.5/10
Every once in a while, you have the rare pleasure of stumbling across a musician whose entire persona, style, and catalog are exactly what you didn't know you were missing. This was the case for me and the music of Eartheater — AKA Alexandra Drewchin — who I stumbled across sometime in 2022 and became instantly infatuated with. Her music is an indecipherable blend of industrial experimentation and shimmering folk ballads, made all the more impactful by Drewchin's real-life penchant for bold fashion, high art, and dance. Born in a rural area of northeastern Pennsylvania, the now 34 year-old multi-instrumentalist grew up home-schooled in an Eastern Orthodox household. As she aged, she developed a taste for artistry, and at age 17, she moved to New York City in a jerk decision that proved to be nothing short of preordained. While busking in the city, Drewchin drew the attention of none other than Roberta Flack, and suddenly, her door to the music industry was thrust open. In the decade since then, Drewchin's notoriety and adulation have done nothing but grow, and she now comfortably inhabits a larger-than-life presence that fans — myself included — wait with bated breath to absorb. While it's been three years since the release of her last LP, 2020's Phoenix Flames are Dew Upon My Skin, Eartheater has finally returned with Powders, and the wait couldn't have been more worth it.
In an interview with Crack Magazine, Drewchin spoke on the album by saying, "Powders is more intimate, a completely new sound. I think I’m playing with nostalgia more than I ever have.” This new sound is certainly apparent on the record, blending the etheral IDM of her 2018 mixtape Trinity with the orchestral ambience of Phoenix Flames in order to create something wholly unique. Apparently, Powders is the first of two Eartheater albums that will be arriving in the near future, and highlights a softer sound that is meant to accompany a future release entitled Aftermath. While the prospect of another Eartheater album is enough to make me giddy, Powders is here now, and there's oh-so much to love about it. Almost entirely written, produced, and performed by Drewchin herself, the record is one of the most polished and concise she's ever released. Just like the rest of her work, Powders finds beauty in deformation and distortion, wiggling through all constraints of genre or style with a lithe contortion not unlike Drewchin's pose on the cover.
For anyone unfamiliar with Eartheater, lead single "Pure Smile Snake Venom" is an excellent introduction to the world that her music usually inhabits. Wailing, barely intelligible vocals whose lyrics allude to romance in the darkest of ways, looming walls of electronic instrumentation, and an overall mood of dystopian elegance — all the elements of an Eartheater-classic are here in full force. Where this track stands apart, however, is in its refinement of these elements, which results in a song that captures a feeling of effervescence that's impactful even by Drewchin's usually transcendent standards. The track centers around a thumping rhythm of synth and bass, creating an atmosphere of sensual synthwave fit for Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void (2009). Lyrically, the song showcases Drewchin at her most delightfully diabolical. It's an earnest sentiment of vulnerability and intimacy for a lover, but presents more like a predator taking a liking to its prey. "I could rip you to shreds but I like you/So I bare my fangs just to let you know that I like you." It's the sort of theatrics that only an artist like Eartheater could convincingly carry out, because despite the song's wonderfully macabre presentation, it's still an emotionally resonant translation of the overwhelming desire for honest — albeit lustful — intimacy.
The album begins with the song "Sugarcane Switch," a gorgeous slow-burn that unfurls the hauntingly beautiful soundscape the rest of Powders is going to explore. The track opens on a droning string section, reminiscent of the symphonic instrumentation of Phoenix Flames. Over the course of the song, this orchestral foundation slowly dissolves into looming electronica, until the entire track eventually succumbs to abstraction. The vocal performances here are definitely soaked in plenty of Björk-worship, which is really just to say that they're alien, eerie, and wholly evocative. The lyrics are just as strange (and borderline BDSMish) as ever, using the imagery of a sugarcane switch to express ideas of self-actualization through suffering, as well as a sadistic romance with the natural world. While it's certainly a song whose presence and overall atmosphere grow at a gradual rate, the track isn't a build-up so much as it is a reveal. The song practically emerges through the mist of its own presentation, never reaching a traditional sort of crescendo, but instead preferring to lay itself bare and allow the listener to bask in the mere act of experiencing it.
"Crushing" is a heavenly dose of vintage-sounding trip-hop, as well as probably my favorite track on the record. Eartheater's music can usually be described with words like "cold" or "alien," but this song completely abandons those tendencies in favor of warm and gorgeously familiar production. The drums are delightfully crisp, and when paired with a backdrop of melancholic strings; it's a match made in Heaven. To top it all off, the lyrics are some of the best on the album, with such memorable lines as, "You're a guy who eats pussy well/You're a well of reasons to keep crushing on your shore." On my initial listen of the album, "Crushing" didn't just catch me off guard with how non-Eartheater it sounded; I had to loop the song three times before I was satiated enough to move onto the rest of the album. It's the sort of music that I didn't even know I wanted from Eartheater, and while it's difficult to explain what exactly feels so different about "Crushing," I couldn't be more happy with its inclusion.
Drewchin tries her hand at covers with a rendition of System of a Down's "Chop Suey" — strangely the second time the song has been covered by a major artist this year (following Lil Uzi Vert's disasterous "CS"). Eartheater's version pays homage to the original song's hidden harmonic beauty by deconstructing the track's iconic metal components into melancholic guitar and disembodied vocals. This "Chop Suey" is wholly a ballad, no longer meant to showcase virtuositic instrumentation but instead created as a backdrop for Drewchin's performance. As expected, she delivers on every possible front, completely transforming Tankian and Malakian's words into an etheral fable. The song concludes in a climactic breakdown of thumping percussion and shimmering piano notes, resulting in one of the album's absolute best listening experiences.
Both "Heels Over Head" and "Mona Lisa Moan" continue to explore the album's affinity for supernatural sensuality. The former is a IDM-inspired trip through unidentifiable chimes and tittering percussion (as well as what sounds like a marble rolling around in a rainmaker), with some of the most overtly sexual lyrics on the album: "Come for me, give me reason to be naked, come for me." "Mona Lisa Moan" is a muted track that buries oceans of house bass and drums under muddy filters, instead favoring clicking percussion and faintly plucking strings to take precedence in the mix. Lyrically, the song is an utterly unimpressed dismissal of an obsessive lover who doesn't even have the balls to act on their desire. "What am I to you? A painting in a museum, no touching? Gonna need you to act on it, come make Mona Lisa moan." It's easily some of the most clever writing on the project, and the words are only made all the more powerful by Drewchin's addictively slick performance.
Hopefully, my absolute adoration for this album should be more than clear by now, but I would remiss if I didn't mention a few of my minor gripes. "Face in the Moon" and "Clean Break" are both solid songs, but they're admittedly a little forgettable. After more than a dozen listens of the project in full, these two continue to prove difficult to recall. This by no means means that these songs are weak or ill-composed, but rather that they're less concise examples of Eartheater's brilliance that stray somewhat too far into the ether. Still, they do little to hinder the overall flow of the album, and both still have plenty of quirks that maintain my attention on each listen.
After a mere 34 minutes and only 9 tracks, the album comes to a close with the stunning outro "Salt of the Earth." The song centers around a gentle whirlwind of pizzicato fingering, awash in ghostly vocals and tinges of glistening ambience. There really couldn't be a more perfect outro for an album as strange and beautiful as Powders, and it wonderfully completes the record's journey by providing a safe shore to cling to. Like other Eartheater albums, this record really needs to be heard to be believed, but Powders truly stands apart for its incredible succinctness and relative accessibility. While her music has always served as portal to another world, this album is easily one of the most noteworthy journeys she's ever created, and one of the easiest and most addictive to revisit. I can't wait to hear what Eartheater still has in store for Aftermath, but until then, Powders is more than enough escapism to last me a lifetime.
Favorite Tracks: Sugarcane Switch, Crushing, Chop Suey, Mona Lisa Moan, Pure Smile Snake Venom, Salt of the Earth (H2ome)
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