Though 's releases reflect 's rapid growth as a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, they share similar conceptual arcs. Whether challenging rom-com ideals on the Talk Talk EP or confronting racial prejudice -- internal as well as external -- on the Impostor EP, the characters in songs assert themselves with a striking mix of calmness and frustration. 's vocals may be soothing, but their guitars and synths are seething. On their debut album, questions norms more artfully than ever. Revolving around an artificial intelligence that liberates itself from its human creator, is steeped in allusions to works ranging from Jia Tolentino's namesake essay to films such as Ex Machina, Her, and the work of Satoshi Kon, whose classic anime thriller Perfect Blue provides the title for the sweeping, slightly ominous opening track that hints at the album's ambitions. Befitting 's concept, brings more clarity to their music, most notably in the steadily calibrated rhythms that drive each track. On "Nothing's Wrong"'s electro-psych-pop, the dreamily bobbing beat almost disguises observations like "I'll normalize what's going on/So I won't have to make things right" before floating away. Like (one of 's key influences), excels at using detachment to create subtle but palpable tension: "The End"'s rebellion masquerades as a string-driven lullaby, stretching out the suspense until a massive beat shatters the song's constraints. 's increasingly sophisticated songwriting cleverly expresses the blurring boundaries between the real and virtual worlds, and the growing awareness -- and rejection -- of being shaped by outside input, whether it's a data set or societal expectations. The use of a stomping, singalong chorus to decry the conformity of social media on "Lain (Phone Clone)" delivers some well-played irony; elsewhere, 's lyrics are as eloquent as they are economical. "Bore new/Everything is see-through/Confused/They might see they're like you," they sing with silvery, inhuman perfection on "Like You," distilling a techno-emotional crisis into a handful of words. 's guitar still acts as a musical lightning rod on "Your Eyes Are Mine," where the fractured riff foreshadows the inevitable rift between the AI and its creator, but the album's largely electronic palette adds more exciting dimensions to 's music. "Follow the Cyborg"'s fusion of Blade Runner-esque arpeggios and saxophones gives a deceptively slick veneer to 's reflections on performing a persona in a world with unmeetable demands; draped in whistling and warping synths, the Korean-language version of the song that follows is just as haunting in an entirely different way. 's emotions are more complex and more present than in 's previous work, particularly on the epilogue "Syncing," which folds in lyrics from the album's other songs as it pulls away, offering closure as well as the feeling that there's no going back. With all the possibilities reveals, there's no going back for 's music, either. ~ Heather Phares