Jordan Patterson makes Songs From a Valley Girl sparkle like Y2K radio with a sharper voice

Jordan Patterson’s Songs From a Valley Girl EP receives 30 June review attention, and the title is almost too perfectly designed for a project steeped in turn-of-the-millennium pop radio. The Los Angeles singer’s debut for Secretly Canadian arrives only nine months after The Hermit, but Pitchfork frames the five-song set as rapid, wide-ranging and vocally distinctive enough to avoid getting swallowed by its references. That is the key with Y2K nostalgia. Plenty of artists can borrow the gloss, waltz-pop melodrama, rap-adjacent phrasing and radio-bright surfaces; fewer can make those materials feel personally inhabited. Patterson seems to use the EP as a quick costume rack without disappearing inside the clothes. Songs From a Valley Girl sounds like an artist trying on several pop dialects and discovering that the strongest instrument is still the expressive voice cutting through the shimmer.

Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jordan-patterson-songs-from-a-valley-girl-ep/