U is the sound of finding bits of yourself in places either unexpected or abnormal. Underscores’ third album was inspired by the consumerist architecture April Harper Grey adored at a young age. The allegorical slush of a hotel or mall is an interesting mirror for a human being to gaze into, much like U’s autotune, electropop-dubstep production, complextro-style cut-up beats, and geometric synths.

The album captures the euphoria but also dead-ends of such a virtue. Fans of 2023’s Wallsocket will yearn for its sardonic humour, while opener Tell Me (U Want It) unintentionally inspects the superficiality of 2000s pop; a moment of style over substance that boasts only the outlines of what makes the album U-nique, including, yes, autotune and cut-up beats.

But outlines have it in them to form into something greater; several elements of Hollywood Forever could hog your attention, namely its platform shoe bassline, lighting up dusky floors before transforming into a frothing synth collision: a dance dance evolution.

And Do It is the album’s complete package; fused rhythms that form old school dance pop beats, and now-trademark ‘snippet’ production that includes interjections of acoustic guitar that highlights just how ambidextrous a lot of older dance-oriented pop production could be.

A reformatted Underscores leads to April outdoing herself as a potential trendsetter, tastemaker and innovator – the kind that leads Detroit rappers to make their own EDM albums. Luckily, she knows how to utilise the consumerist architecture influence of U; even Underscores’ unashamed, less conceptual pop record is still freaking smart.

Thank April’s precise style of production, uncontained by a minimalism that differs from Wallsocket’s tendency to concisely pack itself to the point of no breathing room. Call her meticulous as she fawns over the musical path she chose on Music, throwing her instruments in the trash to literally harmonise the word “harmony” whilst smothered with vocoder. Call her deathlessly creative as the cigarette-based romance of The Peace is guided by a smoky-breath vocal harmony being the entirety of the beat.

There is a cold, evil crush that resolves the hook of Innuendo (I Get U) in which subtly grating percussion melds with a vocal stoicism. Feelings of realisation are contrasted much like the unknowingness of what that realisation may entail.

Far more heart-on-sleeve, there is a burst of yearning on Lovefield – “it will be Winter soon, and I’ll be Twilight pale…” – which leads to a cathartic finale, alone on the dancefloor but having the best time. It is a self-help conclusion for the presumed defeat of unreciprocated love, which journeys with an oceanic, percussive synth line; a combination that – sort of – returns on final track Wish U Well.

While I preferred Wallsocket, U utilises its own approach to electropop just as well as its predecessor. Wallsocket’s storytelling was accurately met by a sonic maximalism that allowed urged deep narratives, but U’s hacked-to-pieces forefront is more than suitable for the album’s muddled, underdeveloped, maybe shallower, thematic romances.

Best tracks – Innuendo (I Get U) – Lovefield – Do It.

Rating – 7 out of 10