Anywhere by Yawning Portal

For fans of Underscores, Croatian Amor, Caroline, dystopian ambient music, and the Luddite impulse within us all, Anywhere by Yawning Portal lets hyperpop and other nostalgic, techno-optimistic aesthetics roam in the emotional desert of post-COVID austerity. Heavily processed vocals, airy synthesizer tones, and a touch of that trademark hyperpop noise invoke that era of flippant cultural irony which culminated in the pandemic. Where the songs of that era dove headfirst into a crazed, nihilistic party, however, Yawning Portal instead pronounces the party dead at the scene, scattering these aesthetics into such a wide field as to leave the art stranded between minimalism and maximalism. Today, that generation of people who grew up alongside social media, alongside that ridiculous lie that we as a society could innovate our way out of collapse, now realizes how severely they’ve been played for fools. When we hear those sounds of digital euphoria, we now can’t even muster up the energy to dance ironically like we did with hyperpop; now, we’re left with the crushing reality of a dead culture and a silent conscience.