Review Summary: Slay
Trying to piece together coherency in the Hyperpop scene is as realistic as getting a six-beer-deep Republican to enjoy Hedwig and the Angry Inch with his work buddies on a Saturday night after a long day at the lumberyard. I could talk about clear visual influences like how Dorian's aesthetic is essentially LiquidSky2.0, the diet Joker edition, but that would be a disservice to how ***ing fun this album is. Do you like cocky, gender-bending lyrics and vocal inflections blended with hoppity bass inversions and reverb-happy drum machines? Well, you should. Intimidating as it may be, this is the kind of direction that Pop as a general movement should be gravitating towards due to its tonal flexibility and bubbly personality.
Take songs like 'Man to Man' that start with club-ready thumps and lead into a chorus that hooks you with the same melodic swagger that got millennial mean girls impersonators obsessed with saying "it's Britney Bitch" a decade and a nickel ago. Now imagine the song structure breaking down in a dissonantly cathartic mess of synth warbles blended with deep bass cuts and octave jumping silky robotic croons from Dorian's smoothly chaotic performance. Is the album consistently like this? Yes and no. There's a straightforward style here sonically, but the songwriting takes liberties that, while I wish took more risks, still wags its proverbial arpeggio at you from time to time, saying, "ah ah ah, you didn't sing the magic chorus." Oh yeah, choruses, this album has hooks for days thanks to how Dorian doesn't care about the particulars of vocal articulation in a traditional sense. Instead, Dorian uses every production tool at their disposal in songs like the title track to beep boop up a memorable octave-leaping digital line that worms its way into your cranial cavity; like fuzzy memories from a night with too many mimosas followed by a relieving bowl of quinoa before you sludge to your retail job like the wage-slave you wish you weren't.
So, do you like pop? Do you wish your Pop had a bit more bite? Then, listen to Flamboyant sometime and vary your day with some wickedly decadent self-empowerment and trauma exploring tunes that will make you feel a little less dead inside for five minutes before you remember how much your life sucks.
