Review: Vibrant, Genre-Defying Pop from Big Ideas

Over the course of her relatively short career, US pop musician Remi Wolf has become known for a hypersaturated, genreless take on indie-pop that draws in influences from classic rock to squelchy indie-funk to sun-dappled nu-disco. The 28-year-old Californian has been lumped in with a wave of genre-agnostic gen Z musicians such as Spill Tab and bbno$, but to her credit, Wolf is something of a progenitor of the sound, and her take on it is fleshed-out and vivid. Her new album, Big Ideas, is filled with small details, such as the cowbell that stumbles through Toro, or the Nirvana-goes-to-Coachella vocal effect on Alone in Miami, that suggest her music is hardly an effort of pop-by-committee.

It’s a slight but enjoyable record. Wolf’s influences are often so legible that it’s hard not to listen and play a game of spot-the-reference, like when gothic Tame Impala-style psych-pop drifts towards MGMT-esque weirdness on Cherries & Cream. But in an era of interconnected cinematic universes and Easter egg-laden music videos, it’s hard to deny that she’s working in the lingua franca of our time – and, on some songs, such as the anxious Wave, which grafts together hypnotic ska with a sledgehammer nu-metal chorus, that approach yields invigorating results.