As murky and lonesome as Sharp Pins songs can be, Kai Slater has a gift for making them feel strangely radiant. On ‘Stop to Say “Hello”’, he sings about “the tired light where you open your eyes,” and that openness – same as a heart stripped of all defenses – is what buoys many of the songs on Balloon Balloon Balloon, his third album under the moniker; the inevitable pop. Though uniformly lo-fi and hook-laden, the 21-track collection doesn’t wash away its yearning or reverence for music of decades past, but allows their different shades to melt into one. As much as you may want to listen to it alone, as it was mostly made, you can only hope it stays out of the dark.
1. Popafangout
The opening track was one of the few songs on the album that took a whole day to complete instead of being written and recorded in less than half an hour. Though it began as a nonsense phrase Slater found himself humming, the hook becomes slightly sinister more than just catchy, the arrangement more dense than you might assume.
2. I Don’t Have the Heart
The second track is as much of a classic pop song in affect as it is in spirit; it’s up there with the hookiest songs on the album.
3. I Could Find Out
Slater leans into the album’s lo-fi sensibilities with the more reserved ‘I Could Find Out’, which finds him really muffling his vocals in line with its murky headspace. “Your mind is grey and without repose/ Into your dozen chambers/ Like a kiss but from a stranger’s eyes,” he sings. He even sneaks another song at the very end, intent on utilizing every breeze of inspiration.
4. Queen of Globes and Mirrors
The guitars shimmer like shattered glass as Slater takes things in a psychier direction, continuing to drift in and out of consciousness. It spins a mythical tale in which the narrator’s perspective isn’t revealed until the very end: “I don’t want you to see me/ When I’m all alone/ By that time you’ll know my mind is gone.” ‘Queen of Globes and Mirrors’ is a taste of that sweet escapism.
5. (I Wanna) Be Your Girl
When ‘(I Wanna) Be Your Girl’ was released as a single, it felt like the kind of song you’d heard somewhere before but can’t quite place. By now, it feels decades old, and still thrives off its simplicity. It’s the longest song on the album without feeling overstuffed, but rather to repeat the titular desire enough to give the illusion that’s affirmed at the end of the lyric sheet: “(ad infinitum).”
6. Gonna Learn to Crawl
‘Gonna Learn to Crawl’ is mournful and trepidatious, yet still doesn’t shy away from some indelible harmonies. It comes straight from a heart that gets a shrinking feeling as the sky balloons over it, a reminder to lie low and swallow the loss.
7. Balloon 1
The first act is over; the interlude lends a sense of structure to what could seem like a formless collection, vaporous as it still might feel.
8. I Don’t Adore-Youo
“I’ve lost you now,” Slater sings, picking up the sentiment from ‘Gonna Learn o Crawl’ from a clearly embittered point of view, punctuated by zany, overdriven guitars and booming, itchy drums that tap out way before any kind of real explosion, let alone explanation.
9. All the Prefabs
Slater sweetens things up with a truly endearing opening lyric: “I got small/ Stepped inside the radio/ But I got lonely waiting for your call.” But then he has fun playing with what it might actually sound like to step into the (pirate)radio, dampening the song so it oddly feels like we’re hearing it from within, then cutting back out again as if losing signal. So far, the album’s second part self-consciously eludes some of the immediate pleasures of the first.
10. Talking in Your Sleep
‘Talking in Your Sleep’ arrives as a more fully-formed song, steeped in nostalgia yet foregrounding Slater’s voice in a way that emphasizes the storyline, which isn’t quite as insular and yearnful as the rest of the songs. The narrator is forced to sit with someone else’s hurt, and not having it disjointed lends credence to the passage of time.
11. Fall in Love Again
Slater continues to punch through his vocals on the punkier ‘Fall in Love’, which treats the situation like a real bummer. “When you’re all alone/ Do you think of me or just acetone,” he quips.
12. Serene Haus of Hair
The track spins an enchanting melody, ratcheting up the reverb on Slater’s vocals as they get back to lyrically muddier territory. “I’m not bitter/ I’m just a snake with jealous eyes/ Let me lie,” he offers curiously before fading off into the night.
13. (In a While) You’ll Be Mine
It’s not hard to argue the album’s best songs start with parentheses in the title – and ‘(In a While) You’ll Be Mine’ does scan a bit like a sequel to the first one, except instead of girl it’s rock ‘n’ roll queen. The tune is appropriately more rambunctious, armed with a killer chord progression that trades jangle for White Stripes-level swagger.
14. Balloon 2
A rowdier interlude than the first, slicing together unintelligible singing and scratchy guitar that sound miles – or maybe just moments – away from another earworm.
15. Ex-Priest / In a Hole of a Home
The guitar tone has a brittle bite to it, and Slater’s voice isn’t up front in the mix so much as uncomfortably close. The best bit, though, is hearing that bass roil in right before he sings “Well the lights are all right.”
16. Takes So Long
Sometimes you walk down a certain street but feel like you’re spinning at lightning speed, itching with anticipation someone will cross your path. “In your orbit I’m like a puppet on a string/ I could reach you but it takes so long,” Slater sings, elongating the titular words, the instruments around him racing like a body keeping up with an anxious mind.
17. Stop to Say “Hello”
The album fittingly slows down for ‘Stop to Say “Hello”’, a pure pop song that serves as a kind of palate cleanser. There’s a tenderness to it that also justifies its placement, still hammering home the feeling of aloneness but less afraid to embrace friendship, uncertain as its future may be.
18. All the Shops and Store Are Closing Now
And all the narrator wants is a chance to show them around, to share in the hazy afterglow of bars and neon lights loving, untouched stations. The line, endearingly, is “bars and stars,” which says a lot about the kind of romanticism Slater is enamoured with. It’s just him and his guitar, which he almost sounds eager to set aside and go out.
19. Maria Don’t
The album’s big – emotionally, if not instrumentally – sentimental lament comes toward the very end of the album, drawing you in with Slater’s falsetto and a golden melody. Just looking at the title, your imagination can fill out what the song is about – the tomorrow that feels like it’s already come, the missing that gets ahead of itself.
20. Crown of Thorns
For all its lyrics about hiding away and crawling back into your skin, all Balloon Balloon Balloon does is open itself up to the listener. Over guitar chords that drop like crusty snow, Slater gets to the crux of the album: “I want you to know me baby/ If it doesn’t show/ In a lion’s home/ Lust and all the games we play/ When it all will melt away.”
21. Balloon 3
It was bound to happen, wasn’t it?
