Review: Sasha Alex Sloan lights the match with ‘I Blame the World’
The pop songwriter reaches new songwriting heights.
“I’m scared of a gun in a grocery store,” aches Sasha Alex Sloan on the “Intro” to her new album. It’s a raw, exasperated admission of our collective unease to go anywhere safely these days. I Blame the World, Sloan’s second studio effort, arrived May 13. A day later, a killer opened fire in a Buffalo grocery store and killed 10 Black people. If you live in America, or simply follow the news, you know how frequent mass shootings are in this country. Everyday is a tragedy. With Sloan’s words, I’m reminded of the pain, this pain, that feels different than any other. I Blame the World tangles with barbed, sour-roots, sprouting in thematic dirt ranging from anxiety and depression to global warming. It’s a time capsule of what it means to exist in 2022, and it’s a pretty grim snapshot.
With the title track, a bull-dozer of a moment, Sloan succumbs to the darkness swelling inside her brain. “Can’t see the good in all the bad / Can’t make me happy when I’m sad,” she whispers, later admitting she’s “a glass-half-empty kinda girl.” The singer-songwriter counters toxic positivity with the extreme, a necessary opposite to the world. Where there’s light, there must be darkness. Where there’s joy, there must be sorrow. And where there’s healing, there must be pain.
Crushing adulthood, tightly-wound with a razor-sharp blade to capitalism’s throat, comes into view with “Adult,” a bounding teardown about getting older. “I used to think by now I’d be a mom / Just turned twenty-six and I can barely feed my dog,” she protests. Sloan draws you closer to pull in the reins on the most insightful line, cutting to the heart of the matter: “I never thought I’d grow up so fast / But I’m hoping the best comes last.”
In the age of digital media, we’re constantly doomscrolling and watching the clock, waiting for the work day to end to attempt to live a normal life. News headlines and social feeds make it hard to even care for one’s mental health, much less actually do anything to change a thing. When vintage TV shows made us scared of quicksand as children, they weren’t talking about actual quick sand. It’s life. Life is a big vat of quick sand, from which none of us can escape.
“Don’t wanna live my best life / Just wanna lay here all night,” sings Sloan on “Live Laugh Love,” a rearrangement of tepid sentiments molded into beautifully drab television static. What does living one’s best life even mean in 2022? Not a whole lot. She goes on to unfurl more stresses that pounce at all hours of the night, as sleep seems like such a fruitless endeavor, “Wishing I was someone else / Up until four in the morning / Stressing over global warming.”
Sloan wails about her life’s purpose (“WTF”) before writhing down into a depressive mud-slide (“I h8 myself”) and later fessing up to a past break-up (“Hardest Thing”). I Blame the World builds with each moment, somehow topping her marvelous debut, 2020’s Only Child. It’s the sort of near-apocalyptic soundtrack in which we could all find both enlightenment and comfort. It’s as soothing as a hot-toddy, zippy and quick to burn the throat. But sometimes, a little booze goes a long way in this life. The world is all going to hell anyway, so may as well get drunk and cry in the bathroom.
