“Remi Wolf is a crazy bih but is also hella nice and sweet sometimes but also likes to yell at people but has figured out that maybe instead of yelling at people she can just sing.” This is the description that greets users who visit Remi Wolf’s official Spotify artist page.
It’s not an inaccurate first impression for people who might be new to our October Artist of the Month, Remi Wolf. She’s arrived on the indie-pop scene in a neon and rainbow-drenched burst and has become something of a festival darling over the past year. Active social media users probably heard her track “Photo ID” on TikTok, but Wolf’s budding discography is much more than the viral hit may have suggested.
Juno, her debut full-length album, is an odyssey through a world of oddities. In a recent interview with Consequence, Wolf shared that she has a tendency to create very organically, following her body more than her brain. “If my mouth is saying something, like a syllable or consonant, I will follow what my body wants to sing before I’ll follow what my brain wants to say,” she explains.
Juno is bursting at the seams with pop idiosyncrasies, thirteen tracks of controlled chaos. It’s heavy on electronica and layered harmonies. Don’t let the sonic inventiveness distract from the lyrical adventure within Juno, though — it’s part mid-20s self-reflection, part trippy daydream, and part hyperrealistic indie film set in Los Angeles. (Good luck finding a verse like “Hey guys, should I Postmate Chuck-E-Cheese?/ Wait, there’s no Chuck-E-Cheese in Los Feliz” on any other album this year.)
The backdrop of the city of Los Angeles, which Wolf claims as her city, is palpable throughout the record. There’s a sunniness within the cacophonous symphony, like the beachy “Volkiano,” which features quirky, video game-like flourishes. For all its futuristic energy, there’s still plenty of pop accessibility to be found, though. “Buzz Me In” is an earworm. “wyd” is a dancey, harmony-stacked bop.
