You know that moment in a Looney Tunes skit where a dangling anvil suddenly falls on someone’s head, burying them into the ground, as the orchestra swells in a farcical phrase? Consider how macabre an image that is, which through the lens of cartoonish humour, suddenly becomes joyous. With A Hammer begins with a whimsy overture of clarinets and flutes, playfully scatting like a Looney Tunes skit. Then, waves of static rise and fall before Submerge FM plunges into booming bass, Yaeji trading between Korean and English as she confesses how Google told her “there’s nothing we can do to save the future generation.” Like a Looney Tunes skit, much of With A Hammer seethes with an underlying sense of tension, abject feelings of rage and disillusionment being expressed through childlike absurdity and wonder. But it’s how these feelings are acted upon that feels revelatory, so that With A Hammer becomes about the rebirth of its creator.
For Yaeji, rage might seem like an unexpected thematic concern. The Korean-American producer rose to prominence with her early EPs that combined hip-hop and house music with her outsider pop sensibilities. That point of view has often painted Yaeji as the emphatic observer rather than the party girl, and through these observations she has developed an astute running commentary on the state of the world and her generation. This commentary comes to a head on With A Hammer, which sees Yaeji grapple with notions of alienation and disenfranchisement while expanding her sonic scope toward downtempo synthpop, abstract ambient, and touches of psychedelic trip-hop. The album is both a conundrum and epiphany, a manifesto whose rage is exercised quietly and with care.
Download and stream With A Hammer here
On Passed By Me, her nursery rhyme-like melody sung in childlike sing-song apologises to Mother Nature as the schema around her melts into glitch-heavy stoner psych-hop. The juxtaposition here reveals how With A Hammer’s violence really works; it’s discomforting, a touch uncanny, and undeniably powerful. It’s in embracing her otherness here that Yaeji finds power. Take the album’s now synonymous symbol, a Thor-like sledgehammer onto which a kawaii face has been drawn in marker pen. Wielding it quietly on the album’s cover, Yaeji presents herself as an alternate superhero. She’s no Viking god, but she’s just as awesome. The album’s early ruminations on society, nature, and the frustration of youth (lead single For Granted, the title track) take shape as simmering slow-burns, so that when With A Hammer gradually becomes more outwardly angsty, it plays out like Yaeji the superhero’s origin story. This is a superhero whose modus operandi is not so much grandiose displays of strength, but rather an emotional cognisance that renders Yaeji untouchable. She fights what she regards as the real villains: those things about the world that cause us emotional turmoil. It’s these things that she’s here to smash with her hammer. She’ll destroy all those things “distressing you,” she coos on 1 Thing To Smash, a gorgeous ambient synth ballad that sees Yaeji team up with a similar hero, Loraine James.
With A Hammer is a gloriously realised body of work that by its end, feels utterly triumphant. As a journey from Yaeji as observer to Yaeji as self-aware avenger, there’s a captivating honesty to the narrative at play that only strengthens the album’s considered and precise production. By the time the album’s fiery M.I.A leaning climax, Michin, rolls in, we’re on our feet cheering the arrival of Yaeji in all her glory.
Listen to Michin from With A Hammer below.
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