Review: Amy Shark takes bites out of love & heartache on ‘Love Monster’

A prominent fixture of the pop art boom of the 1960s, Andy Warhol, whose artistic exploration at the fork of celebrity culture and self-expression was both ornate and organic, once said of creation: “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” That shrewdness served him well over the course of his prolific career, and it behooves us mere mortals to take his advice. Amy Shark (real name Amy Billings) certainly has taken it to heart. Hailing from Queensland out of Australia, she began scribbling down songs on parched notebook paper in high school, and she wouldn’t release her first project until 2017’s extended play Night Thinker, a cool and quick-cut six songs indebted to the outpouring of blood, sweat and tears onto weathered and cracked concrete.

Three years later, she finally issues her first proper full-length, called Love Monster, which executes a daring trapeze act in a sparkling spread of hip-hop and indie-pop. “I’m just getting started,” she pledges with lead single “I Said Hi,” a nimble underdog anthem positioning the record as a hypnotizing and miraculous pinnacle of the year. “You can only put your heart into something for so long and get nothing back before you start redirecting your focus,” she expressed in a radio interview. Blessedly, the stars have aligned, and Billings is leaving her imprint in lavish strokes worthy of the highest order.

“I Got You” skids and banks a hard left in a fashion similar to that of Julia Michaels, whose “Uh Huh” bares a striking musical chord here, but Billings nudges the barometer to infinity and beyond. Her instincts are scary, as she ransacks each and every risk she dares to attempt. “What did you think about me the second that you saw me / What did I think about you, baby, I thought of everything / Spending more time than I should / I sound like you, I knew I would,” she sings, ca-cooing in time with the song’s sticky downgrade. She makes like a snake in the weeds, slicing the stalks with devilish beauty. “All Loved Up,” co-written with and produced by pop master Jack Anonoff, known in recent times for his work with Lorde, St. Vincent and Taylor Swift, among others, demonstrates the quirky and swanky, as trendy as you might expect but never relinquishing Billings’ ability to make you crumble. “We’ve been kicking these words around too long / I had a feeling we were close to something big / A deep breath under a baseball cap / One way ticket to a heart attack,” she sings to unmask the anxiety of taking the next step in a relationship.

“It’s gonna be tough ’cause I got a few things to work through,” she admits, perhaps unwittingly scrawling out a manifesto for the entire album. Throughout Love Monster, she acknowledges, confronts, destroys and reconfigures her psychological and emotional states. With “The Idiot,” she displaces heartbreak for regret, whipping out rough-cut guitar that trickles in and out the percussion’s tiny eye sockets, and “Never Coming Back,” another genre-bending collision with inescapable thuds, sees Billings wrestling after a relationship’s embers seep out of her fingers. “Have the time of your life / Leave with whoever you want tonight,” she sings, almost as a reassurance to herself that she made the right choice. “Had a lot to say but now I’m all empty down to the bottom / There’s no way I could give you what you want,” reads the second verse. If you’ve ever gotten your heart broken or turned the knife on someone else, you know the decision is never easy ⎯⎯ echoes of uncertainty and fear and shame can be heard leaking into your dreams at night.

“Psycho,” a team-up with blink 1-82’s Mark Hoppus, who also produces, extends the reaches of Billings’ craft, drawing upon veiny folk-pop craftsmanship. “I can tell that you’re upset right now / Think you’re being a little dramatic, babe,” she extends a loving hand in his direction before reminding him on the hook that “I ask you ’cause I wanna to know / Not because I’m psycho / Just because I care a lot.” Her affections rise squarely from her chest. Her heart slams against her ribcage, which splinters and flies into the air. Hoppus is also undergoing his own befuddling state of affairs. “I can feel your eyes across the room / Stops my heartbeat every single time / And you’re talking to some guy that I once knew / What was that look when you both said goodbye,” he sings, splitting his chest in two, too. The delicate dance between the male-female perspective is a absolute magic.

With “Don’t Turn Around,” Billings bumps into an ex-lover in public, and she has an all-out brawl with her very own emotions. She’s mastered the art of civility, even if the two-ton anvil is weighing heavily on her shoulders. Still, she rolls over in great thought, “You just never know, we might dance slow at somebody’s wedding that we used to know / At a picture show, at a funeral / You’re two rows behind me and it’s hard not to turn around.” Minutes later, the flood is unbearable, and she can no longer hold the rising waters at bay, blurting out that she wants “you back all the time.” She heaves in exasperated licks, “Fuck my life.”

Love Monster ⎯⎯ from mustering up confidence to make a move on “Adore” to “You Think I Think I Sound Like God,” a song written in high school about burning teenage passion (“Truth is I wrecked a home and a house / It beats me up when I remember making out in cars,” she whispers) ⎯⎯ was well worth the wait. Also turning to producers Dann Hume (Kita Alexander), M-Phazes (Eminem, Madonna), Cam Bluff (Hilltop Hoods, Allday) and Edwin White (Vance Joy) on a smorgasbord of various cuts, Billings unfastens the nearly-corroded locks storing her mind, body and spirit from the world and lets them fall far and away forever. Never again will she become so snared by her own devices, and through letting ago across 14 songs, she’ll be granted a much grander kind of tranquility.

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