Seventeen year old wunderkind Billie Eilish wastes no time stomping her foot down on her debut full length “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” After a brief vocal track of her declaring she has removed her invisalign, the creeping bass of “bad guy” seeps into your ears with a menacing bounce that will make you wanna get up and dance. This song really sets the tone for the album, a beautiful, bass driven collection of goth-pop songs that feel sometimes like the music we would’ve gotten from Lorde, or Taylor Swift had they grown up listening to bands like KMFDM, The Cure, and the like.
The album has a pretty consistent mix of songs that’ll make you wanna get up and cut some rug, and songs that will make you tell people you were just cutting onions. “you should see me in a crown” feels like a song that would’ve fit perfectly on Taylor Swift’s most recent outing “Reputation,” while the syncing of synth keys with the vocal melody on “my strange addiction” blurs into a mesmerizing, pulsing vein of music.
The album is a little long, and loses a little bit of steam towards the end, but closes strong with the haunting vocal harmonies of the appropriately titled “goodbye.” Still, if the album is indicative of Eilish’s future in songwriting, the world is bound to be at her feet in no time at all. An impressive debut for anyone, nevermind a girl who was born into a post-9/11 America.
