Shybaby boldly exorcises their innermost emotions on tempestuous LP 'Is This Intimate'
After a windup of brilliant singles, Shybaby finally delivers their anticipated Is This Intimate, a full-length ripper of an album that packs an emotional wallop and boldly lays bares the soul with confessional candor.
What makes Shybaby so undeniably engaging is the uncanny ability to annihilate the ego with all the subtlety of a demonic exorcism, essentially amounting to the most intimate of diary entries writ large and expressed with full-bodied passion. There is a physicality to the album that feels like being tossed into a washer and tumbled on high speed until deposited unceremoniously bruised and soaking wet on the dirty linoleum of a 24-hour laundromat - exposed and battered but cleansed of the accumulated sins of a life lived pressing against the boundaries.
Is This Intimate is a cavalcade of pop-infused noise rock the likes of which collides the muscular confidence of Sleigh Bells’ Treats with the feral rawness of the earliest Yeah Yeah Yeahs recordings. A supernova of breakneck rhythms, jagged riffs, and throat-rending screams that whirls unhinged and unpredictable like a tornado touched down and ravaging Brooklyn boulevards with elemental impunity.
From the opening moments of the chaotic “kiki doesn’t like it when you leave me at the party” Shybaby barely lets off the gas, barreling headlong through the entirety track list without pretense or subtlety. The blueprint for this electrically charged blitzkrieg of sound was firmly established over the course of Shybaby’s leading singles including “kiki,” the empowering “Pizza,” and the frenetic “For Rent,” but when these bombastic screeds come together as part of a cohesive whole their impact is amplified exponentially. Like disparate windswept pages collected into an expansive narrative on the process and pitfalls of modern romance, Is This Intimate divulges Shybaby’s deepest emotions with absolute honesty and riveting frankness.
Despite the pervasive fury, there are moments of relative calm peppered across the album that temper the raging tempest. “Skype Sex 2013” wields louder-than-love down-tuned guitars with the forceful intent of a Soundgarden Sub Pop seven-inch, while the back half of the album is populated with a trio of simmering slow-er burners “Sorry,” “Drug Dealer,” and the closer “O Baby” that flirt with balladeering but never wholly abandon Shybaby’s commitment to bringing the noise. These tracks, while no less heavy than their rowdier counterparts, expand the scope of Is This Imtimate and allow the album to avoid wearing itself out, staving off exhaustion and catching its breath before diving headlong once more into the breach.
Is This Intimate is a statement piece, a defiant album that establishes Shybaby as a dominant voice for empowerment and growth in the face of often overwhelming opposition; a banner of victorious resilience held aloft upon the bloody fields of romantic conquest.
Is This Intimate is streaming now on Spotify. Follow Shybaby on Instagram.
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