InkBlog

Her nihilistic college homework songs were a TikTok hit. Now, the Californian’s new double EP contemplates the ‘fantastic horror of having a mind’

Penelope Scott is the kind of artist who brings the end of the world even into her love songs. “Planets hit planets, it doesn’t matter,” she notes blithely on Time of My Life, reeling off various doomsday scenarios over a syrupy clarinet hook.

A philosophy major who grew up playing the piano, the California twentysomething turned to music programming software in college, “because you can’t have a full grand piano in a dorm”, she told The Line of Best Fit. Although the first songs Scott uploaded to TikTok were for homework, followers soon lapped up her cheerful nihilism. Her music blurs genres: she has cited emo rapper Corpse as an influence, and her musicianship and acerbic one-liners recall a lo-fi Nellie McKay. Scott released her debut album, Public Void, in 2020 (after mixtapes Junkyard and Junkyard 2), its breakout hit Rät mourning a pre-Musk paradise when rocket ships and coding still felt innocent. She gives short shrift to tech bros in general; her track Cigarette Ahegao, featuring the line “Hey incels, just have sex (duh)”, was mysteriously banned on TikTok.

Scott’s new double EP, Mysteries for Rats/Girl’s Night, explores what she terms the “fantastic horror of having a mind”. The record tackles diverse musical terrain, the first half using tinny 8-bit melodies, the second slightly more analogue, with piano and guitar taking precedence. But it’s her spin on female guilt, whether feeling impure (Sin Eater) or falling for a serial cheater (Gross), that brings the different threads together. Meanwhile, Cemetery Pigeons conjures a cityscape crammed with vape fumes, vermin and face-mask sweat, and Mexico fantasises about dying alone sipping a cocktail. Is it any wonder Scott sounds so unfazed by the impending apocalypse?

• Mysteries for Rats/Girl’s Night is out now on Amuse

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