There’s a concept called the “uncanny valley” that’s become more relevant in recent years. As humans, we’re wired to feel empathy towards things, even inanimate objects, that have some humanlike qualities: it’s why everyone cried during WALL-E. The uncanny valley, then, shows the limits of that empathetic response. According to the theory, there’s a threshold where something inhuman appears too human, at which point we react with revulsion and fear. That’s why some people are freaked out by Sophia the Robot, or why we all started having night terrors after watching the Cats trailer for the first time.
Leave it to musicians, then, to take that response and make it pleasurable. There’s been a veritable renaissance of music from the uncanny valley, music that provides the pleasures of pop with a thrillingly queasy undercurrent. Artists like Arca and FKA twigs make gorgeous, sensual art pop that seems to shapeshift before your very eyes, like the T-1000 taking up pole dancing. Meanwhile, the hyperpop stylings of PC Music have seeped into the mainstream thanks to ambassadors like Charli XCX, creating something joyously artificial yet eerily human at the same time. To quote a review of an early PC Music hit, “Hey QT”, “we sense that somewhere inaccessible to us, there are a group of people who find this perfectly ordinary, and are writing a review exactly like this one but for Britney Spears.”
“Verdant”, a collaboration between the American alt-pop artist Floraphona and the Nicaraguan producer Naoba, is another song in this uncanny tradition. True to its name, “Verdant” evokes the natural world, with lush production and a serpentine groove. Floraphona herself seems to sing from the point of view of a nature goddess rebelling against encroaching modernity, declaring that fences can’t contain her and demanding worship. It’s an evocative, almost seductive song.
I say “almost seductive” because “Verdant” takes care to complicate things. The production consists of hollow pings of percussion, like pebbles being dropped in an empty oil drum, and a piano pattern that’s glitched and stretched until it becomes translucent. It’s beautiful, but it feels like it’s hiding something; this is not a new Eden, and we discover that Floraphona is not just a coy nature goddess beckoning you closer.
Floraphona’s words are welcoming, but her delivery evinces steely authority. She sings in a taut, brittle monotone, some slight processing adding a metallic sheen to her words. Perhaps her nature goddess is real, or perhaps it’s just a glitch, but when she sings “welcome to my luscious garden”, it’s clear that you’re entering on her terms and no one else’s. It’s a testament to this song’s uncanny power that you’ll happily enter anyway.
