Hyper-pop, an endlessly bountiful, wild-Western rule-barren realm, ruled by kaleidoscopes of star and moon-shaped sequins, cursively-glitching sonic engineering and digital recreations of any real sound a human ear can hear, has long-been cultivated since synths were discovered. But only since the back-end of the 2010s has the genre bared witness to the daylight. In the blush eves and daybreaks of 2015, teenage Ashley Clue, whose roots were first planted in the state of Texas and who built a name for herself underneath the bright lights of California, first began joining the “real, honest” styles of singer-songwriter, indie and country with the then-blasphemies, club-kid electronica and bubblegum pop.
Blinding, glitzy 2000s-pop was still popularly perceived as deserving damnation; the “bimbo” title was loaded with a grenade, the horse-power, Conservative figure heads, Britney’s 2007 psychotic breakdown – caused by perverse, invasive cameras and microphones – was attributed to her so-called failures as a mother. At this time, Ashley punched her fist through such a nearly opaque fabric of pop music, self-funding twisting and breaking synth-pop works that made collages from indie singer-songwriter, New Romantic electronica and Britney’s rich pop.
An early 2010s laptop’s music technology recreated the rawest instruments, and composed rhinestone-honouring stellar demos, cutting up and rearranging the present sound in late-2000s pop, as Clue’s first released musical works. Clue paired desert horizons, cowboy culture, and glimmering contemporary popstar, grittily played organic instruments and a sharp-shooter’s edge, and club princesses’ favourite tracks and ethos. Between spinning these works during DJ sets and building E.P.s off of them, Clue co-founded the ‘Vada Vada’ music and design label – upholstering thrifted iconoclastic, vintage pieces and refashioning cult punkish movements in order to palpably express both, a sense of revolution and a feeling of childhood wonder. Whimsy and imagination are just as important to Ashley’s creative pursuits as sourcing fecund inspirations – enchanted bodies and places from all over the world and history, and thinking up new creatures and universes imprinting on Cowgirl Clue as much as avant-garde runways and D.I.Y. art going against the powers that be. Creating a safe home for creatives cast aside, as well as experimentation and breakthroughs.
This wealth appears in rich finery on the artist’s latest project Rodeo Star, her sophomore album headed by the ruby-bassy digital beats, decadently glossy rhythm and swaggering, raspy early 2000s hip-hop vocal delivery off single “Hometown Hero.” Rodeo’s “Trust Fall” introduces morning-dewy and glistening synths, seashell-bluegrass acoustic guitar and sirencore hip-hop melodies.
Copper-earthy “Tangles in My Hair” and “Cursive in Concrete” further Clue’s sophomore album’s thesis of welding hyper club pop and raw, Midwestern country. Thick banjo plucks dance upon airy, twinkly synths and ebullient 90s New York hip-hop on the former; glitching, fizzing opal thrums and ultrabrite post-punk rave sounds stand tall beside raspy, plains-wandering Ashley vocals on the latter.
Clue composes a trio with “Down By The Lake,” “Running With A Flashlight,” and “Wild Fires,” that questions and soul-searches regarding cages and small-town beliefs and their passing down, as well as the siren’s call of escape, of running wild. Giving thanks, to ungoverned, unruly wide open spaces, at the same time. “Down By The Lake” leads with haunting, deep-sea vocal effects and silvery percussion, slowly embracing rugged, stolen-electric guitar lines, first, rollicking, then aspiring to punk’s greatest heights. On “Running With A Flashlight,” sage-smoky basement-grunge rhythms unite with beating mariposa wings, burnt-golden synth-brasses, as well as bloodily-screaming harmonies and drums. Closing the trilogy, “Wildfires” unapologetically commands with dagger-like percussive 808s and ruby bass notes, blistering, nostalgic harmonica, and dreaming, forest-echoing vocals touched with tragedy.
Ashley Clue’s trust in romance leans its blushing, bashful cheek on “Fairy Tales” and “$Somethin’s in the Air.” On “Fairy Tales” blush pink cream soda bubbles and iridescent basement-disco synths flutter, a recreation of the wings of a fairy acid-queen, luxuriantly dripping in ultramarine and ultra lime-green, in homage to her teenage years and their growing pains. Barefoot, Memphis wildflower-harmonies and Ashley’s singing most tenderly remembering childhood’s dreaming and the innocence of believing nothing was impossible.
Gold-trimmed and cornbread-perfumed Christmas Day’s wishfulness and wistfulness is salvaged in an old firefly jar while the singer-songwriter can still remember it on “$Somethin’s in the Air.” Featuring a story that unfolds along Clue’s grown-up desires, midnight-moonlight shimmering keys, rich copper basslines, and gently gloomy pastry-cream choruses, embody the essence of Clue’s oeuvre thusly.
Ashley cites her debut album, 2019’s Icebreaker, as the first time her projects as an artist was holistically realized. Having collaborated as a producer and song-written for cult pop artists unafraid of getting vulnerable and experimenting, Clue was empowered to unapologetically mix the diverse styles and genres that inspired her to create. Cowgirl Clue’s first album attacks self-consciousness and conquers self-doubt through riotous samplings of classic punk-rock records and musical structures, building divine, ornate architecture into mainstream pop. Landscaped, with the patient axe of laptop music software and the diamond-sharp blade of Clue’s ambition.
Clue’s opening, “Figure 8,” sparkles, seamlessly blending ragged-edged 808 drumbeats and opalescent, rippling piano-synths into an operatic, space-age work of New Romanticism. Announcing her debut full-length work’s ethos like a stamp, the next, titular “Icebreaker” braids waxed glossy 2000s pop essentials with silver-scaled bass synths and siren’s electronic vocal effects, platforming the real-world learned artist’s playful lyrical first introducing herself.
Velvet romance, a musical key of Clue’s palette, gleans on tender hyperpop “Twin Flame,” of candy-coated pop electronica and late-90s candy store pop composition, fearless vocal delivery, and everlasting deep-bronze resonance. On the coin’s other side, “Tainted” demonstrates the artist’s powers of restraint, a yellow wisteria-wound tambourine, wandering cowboy enchanted hope and twanging strings, and strawberry-jam acoustics communicate the mid-album ode’s sombreness of falling hopelessly in love with someone. Two of Clue’s crowning jewels are found along the album’s final stretch – magic and Clue’s technological adventurousness marry heavenly on “Hella Faerie,” and the Renaissance multihyphenate addresses the problematic relationship between throbbing-artery blood-and-guts instruments and musical dedication, and ultra-femme musical decision-making on “A.D.H.D.” The former, paying praise to Ashley Clue’s resilience and growth atop a masterly mixing of cheetah-printed pop revering R&B and its children, classical country harmonies and melodies, and puddle-drenched bare singing. The latter, of which addresses popular and critical attitudes on, her speaking aloud of, and young women’s experiences and issues, luxuriates in, under hand-spun cotton candy digital instruments, happily, alongside, the redly blushing intimacy the artist gifts to her listener, Easter sequin-basses, candy apple guitar licks and a ruby-red piano.
Cowgirl Clue’s earliest projects are not to be skipped, Ashley’s natural knowing of which contrasting sonic realms would be harmonious and her maturation across everything that she has made, splashing down the timeline. “Limelite” (2016) rolls around, makes snow angels in, dirty, messy glitchy hyper-pop, oozing grimy bass and lime green trap while paying a devotee’s homage to Britney Spears’ gold-glazed R&B pop. Just a year later, Ashley’s experimental synth recreations of classical rock instruments, bedroom singer-songwriter imagination and then-pop compositions are brought into the field that she is working in presently on “Cherry Jubilee” – of dropping morning-glossy cherry melodies, rhythms of Mississippi wildflowers’ leaning, and diamond-edged and -encrusted acoustic guitar. The final small project anticipating Ashley Clue’s command over an L.P. is “Teacup, (2021)” a haunting yet fairytale-admiring ode reveling in the enchanted romance of love and friendship that yet, has its eye out for betrayal and heartbreak. A truly gifted, light spinning of prancing plush, spotted-red mushrooms, pirouetting golden-yellow honeysuckles, forbidding bass-cicadas’ chirping, and the queenly shimmer of Ashley’s heartfelt singing.
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