The Tamesis
When April Gray was a child, her parents made the annual pilgrimage from San Francisco to New York to live with her grandparents. Before she left home, the musician, now better known as Underscores, would draw on paper a map of all the places she wanted to visit on the trip: not, it turns out, the Central Park Zoo or the dinosaur skeletons at the museum, but hotel lobbies.
“I think I was about six,” Gray recalled with a laugh. “My grandma would come up to the front desk and say, ‘Sorry, my granddaughter wants to see the room,’ and sometimes they would let us see it.” Hotel rooms aren’t the only objects of her obsession—airports, shopping malls, and supermarkets are also there. “I don’t know why, but all of these things have been speaking to me since I was little,” she said. Perhaps strangest of all, despite the grueling work of being a touring musician over the past five years, the appeal of these spaces has lost none of its luster: “It really is the perfect job!” Gray laughs again.
This is not just are Those are the liminal spaces that appeal to Gray. She’s also fascinated by the way we listen to music through headphones: put them on, zone out, and the busy world spins around you. This is a spirit she is trying to capture you, Her third album was released last week, and it also happens to be the 25-year-old singer’s most cohesive and pop-oriented work to date. “It’s definitely my most accessible work to date,” she admits, though in the world of Underscores, accessibility still means a lot of quirks: Despite its irresistible chorus, the stuttering pop song “Do It” sounds a bit like Britney power failure The EDM-style “Music” cleverly parallels the excitement of writing a perfect song with the frivolous frisson of a panic attack, before erupting into a hair-raisingly aggressive breakdown, all dubstep shaking and drums pounding.
Still, Gray points out, “I wouldn’t necessarily call it a club record. It’s a dance record, but I think it was made for yourself to listen to it with headphones on.” (By the way, if you’re going to listen to it with headphones, put on the best pair you can find: The album’s immaculate soundscapes—produced, as usual, entirely by Gray himself—are truly remarkable.)
