Album Review: Sky Ferreira – Night Time, My Time
3 min read
The name ‘Sky Ferreira’ has been buzzing around cyberspace for what feels like an age when, in actuality, it has only been since 2010, but it has taken the young singer-songwriter 4 years since the release of her debut single 17 to finally follow up with her debut album, Night Time, My Time. With the gap interspersed with the EP’s As If and Ghost to placate her rabid audience, alongside various indie tabloid relationships, scrapes with the law and an ever changing tracklist, will Ferreira finally make her stamp on alternative pop music?
From the get go, the direction that Ferreira has taken is a bit of a surprise, with opening track Boys being exceedingly ’80’s influenced, incorporating heavy, buzzing synths and stomping beats. Ain’t Your Right takes this template and cranks up the speed to frantic proportions, making for a surprisingly hectic beat overlaid by the order of Ferreira’s vocal, which is shown off to even greater effect by the soaring pop-ballad of 24 Hours, a song which would make a brilliant next single.
Things carry a cuter vibe (the crunchy undertones are still present) with the slower I Blame Myself, with Ferreira proclaiming her introspection with the line ‘I blame myself for my reputation’, a statement that is made more poignant given her recent drugs arrest alongside DIIV frontman Zachary Cole Smith. That said, Ferreira is probably causing a little controversy in Japan with the song title of Omanko (google it if you feel the need), though musically it is crunchy and brash in a manner that brings to mind a lighter toned Atari Teenage Riot, and You’re Not The One – the first single from the album – is quite industrial beneath the pop refrains. Kristine only serves to reinforce this, and if the vocals were stripped, you’d be forgiven for thinking of Nine Inch Nails, and I Will, in turn, is punk infused with a punchy drumbeat. If this album is anything, it is eclectic, with Love In Stereo being a subtle radio-pop hit dragged straight out of the ’80’s, before we are plunged down into the murky title track; Night Time, My Time is sombre and eerie in its experimentality, marginally dodging sounding like a dirge, building in intensity before it releases into silence.
In Night Time, My Time, Sky Ferreira has made an accomplished and unexpectedly experimental album. The absence of her hit Everything Is Embarrassing is very telling, as it would have been an easy play to put it there to cash in on its popularity, however, it would simply be out of place here. Night Time, My Time is a different beast, and somehow, Ferreira has managed to take the best of the ’80’s and amp it up to the next degree resulting in her own distinctive brand of gritty and distinctive synthesised pop-rock. It is a formula that would no doubt translate as pretty excitable in a live setting, something that would have been rather unprecedented a few years back with the material off her As If EP; Ferreira has grown up, found her identity and has fought against her label to retain her edge. Instead, she has managed to craft an album that is interesting and dense with noise, subverting all expectations that had been woven around her over these past few years. Ferreira has held all the aces this time around, and is all the better for it.
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