Which is sort of what we've got with Happier Than Ever, but with couple of huge caveats which make the record feel like more of a step forward and then two steps back for Billie. Now 19 and dealing with the extreme pressures of growing up in a world where she's one of the biggest names in music, the record delves into this and how it has effected Billie and her relationships both personal and public. It's certainly more mature and sincere than the forced melodramatic teenage angst of the debut (Billie even sings "When I retell a story, I make everything sound worse" on the opening cut, Getting Older). However, to match this shift in tone, the immediate and attention demanding electropop production has been pared back; instead the much more subtle and minimal influences of soul and jazz-pop (and even a smattering of trip hop) take centre stage. I understand the intent in having more adult and 'tasteful' instrumentation to back up the more mature themes, however the instrumentals generally feel lacking across the board on this album. So many feel wafer thin with no real interesting texture or progression. Ideas that feel fairly fresh at the start of tracks feel run into the ground by their conclusion.
The same can be said of Billie's vocals, she forgoes a lot of the dynamic and staccato flows of the first record for a more traditional soul and vocal jazz approach. However she keeps the hushed, ASMR style elements; which results in plenty of places that would've benefited from a powerful vocals to increase the emotional intensity of these songs. The album is long, and Billie's current vocal aesthetic is really run into the ground by the end of it. The most frustrating thing about this is that Billie is clearly an incredibly talented singer and I really like her voice, but this whole ASMR thing has worn off for me and I wish she mixed it up a bit, because I know she's capable of it.
While most the tracks here range from inoffensively passable to fairly good, what really drags the album down is it's length and general bloat. At 16 tracks and 56 minutes, with most of the tracks being slow and and quiet ballads, it just drags. The stretch from Halley's Comet to Your Power in the second half really tests my patience with slow, sad balled after slow, sad balled. Furthermore the record feels very uncomfortable to listen to, but not in an intentional way. The messy and sprawling nature of it makes it feel unfocused, like Billie is just throwing her heart on the table and baring it all to us in that very teenage way. And while emotional breakdown records like this can work (and some have become all time classics), Happier Than Ever lacks the draw in terms of songwriting and production and just ends up feeling too long, too dour and uncomfortable.
Not that there aren't highlights. The opening track Getting Older is perhaps Billie's best written song to date, being this cute piano balled about looking back on your past self and looking forward to your future. Therefore I Am is the only track with the sense of fun and snark that made some of the singles from the debut so popular, and is catchy as hell. The title track starts as the same accoustic ballad as many of the songs on the record, but half way through switches up into a massive, completely blown out stadium pop rock song that compared to the rest of the album actually feels like it has some cathartic release to it. The singles my future and Lost Cause have also grown on me, being more of slow burns than the immediate singles from the debut record.
Happier Than Ever is such a frustrating record, as it addressed my main problem with the debut, but takes so many steps backwards in other areas that it doesn't feel like an improvement. I'm still hopeful that Billie will grow into the artist she has so much promise to be, but Happier Than Ever isn't that record unfortunately.
Top Tracks: Getting Older, Therefore I Am, Happier Than Ever
4/10
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