Remi Wolf – ‘Mud’ review: funk-pop maximalist gets her hands dirty

Remi Wolf knows what it means to say it with your chest. From her cartoonishly bombastic debut ‘Juno’ and hyper-saturated funk-pop splash of ‘Big Ideas’, to evergreen smash hits like ‘Soup’ and ‘Cinderella’, the California-born artist’s genre-clash maximalism has always shone in scintillating technicolour. But where her previous two albums were paired with fittingly vibrant visuals, the cover of her third record ‘Mud’ starkly depicts the singer caked in sludge, emerging from a swampy baptism with an uncanny smile.

It’s an artistic statement that represents not only the redirection of her sound, but the emotional cleanse Wolf experienced writing this album. “I literally felt like I was covered in shit,” is how she puts it. After turning 30 this year, Wolf admits that her rebirth tracks with what’s become a rite of passage for artists experiencing their Saturn return, the planetary transit astrologers claim coincides with intense personal upheaval and self-reflection.

Fresh out of a two-and-a-half-year relationship and feeling drained by the highs and lows of touring life, Wolf tones down her signature extravagance and winking punchlines on ‘Mud’, leaving rough and earthy textures in their place. Things begin on a sombre note with the breathtaking ‘Bottle’, a song infused with the kind of raw melancholy that will stop you in your tracks. Tempered electro-snap beats, soft ’80s-style riffs and echoey vocals cushion Wolf’s bluest lyrics to date. “I can’t get the bottle if I don’t get up”, she repeats like a self-help mantra, addressing her rocky relationship with sobriety.

While zany comedic quips have long been the engine driving Wolf’s firecracker lyrics, on ‘Mud’, emotional awareness is the spark. On the slow-building ‘Twiggy’, any talk of disappointing derrieres becomes background noise to the resentment she spits out at an emotionally unavailable lover: “You don’t fucking miss me / You just miss your mother”. As far as breakup-up ballads go, though, ‘I Won’t Cry’ should really come with a trigger warning for anyone nursing a broken heart. “I blackout like a dying star”, she winces atop a dragging beat.

Even in the absence of the usual bells and whistles, save for the stomp-clap, power pop flirtation of ‘Wine Drunk’, Wolf reaffirms that her most powerful instrument is her voice. On the fighting ‘Burn Me Blue’ she two-steps between Shania Twain’s country rock balladry and Hayley Williams’ soaring rasp, later showing off her softest country lilt on the pleasing ‘Moon So High’ with John Mayer.

While the bluesy sing-speak-to-belting crescendo gamble of ‘Jamie’ doesn’t land with the same weight as simmering indie-rock crasher ‘Covered In Mud’, and the fingerpicking repetition of ‘Guess’ stalls too long before stirring closer ‘Yellow Rose’, ‘Mud’ will no doubt resonate with anyone who’s experienced a few scrapes and bumps in their twenties (and let’s be honest, who hasn’t?). Whether you’ve made it through or find yourself still in the trenches, ‘Mud’ is a reminder that the other side does exist.

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