Tough Love

“I’ll be young forever/So I’ll put on a show,” pop miserabilist Nessa Barrett declares on her third album’s closing track, “Bad Girls Never Die”, and the songs preceding that claim show how she can conjure high-stakes drama. Barrett’s quivering alto is framed in tremulous strings and cavernous bass ̶”Only For You”. “Glamorous” uses a nod toward Fergie’s 2007 smash as the starting point for a Coldwave-meets-Lana maelstrom. Barrett’s tales of bad romance are full of brutal one-liners—“Silly little me thinking love was more than sex work,” she sneers on the stripped-down “Candy”—and defiant comebacks to lovers who have wronged her in the past. Those lyrics are made even more vibrant by her voice, which can range from a piercing wail to a quivering whisper as she recounts endless nights and world-shattering betrayals.