frill - Touch Me, I'm Sick

frill

​Touch Me, I'm Sick
self-released; 2016

3.4 out of 5

By Jamie Funk
​

Touch Me, I'm Sick by Frill was written in one week during a manic episode. Ok I get it - maybe like a cathartic release but still that's ridiculously quick. At any rate this album is extremely lo-fi. So lo-fi it just sort of sounds like ambient music at times. There is a bunch of reverb, dirty guitar and vocals.The levels are all over the place and obviously were not mastered. 

The album starts with the maddening “Off My Meds.” Frill strums a couple of chords and sings while a frantic 911 call is in the background. I was seriously on edge. “Had To See You” is ambient dissonant mesh of sounds as if Windy & Carl were drunk. You can’t make out a word as it bleeds into the music. “Half Girl Half Man” sounds like sad teenage angst while “U Think Ur Bad” lays on a thick curtain of white vocals. This is arguably the best song but to be honest these songs kind of run together. Less so with the tones but with her sad vocal style which never deviates much.

Touch Me, I'm Sick is about what you would expect from a week's worth of writing and that was produced in a bedroom. It’s not exactly OK Computer but why would it be. As rushed as this album obviously was  with very little production I was impressed with some of the songs.

That being said I have some advice for her if she wants evolve. First off I hope her next effort isn’t written in a week. I’d like to hear an EP or album that she worked on for months or years. If she wants to self-produce but depending on how seriously she wants to make music she will either have to learn more about production and engineering such as compression, EQ, phase and more. 

To her credit she gets a diverse amount of sounds from her guitar. I was impressed with the range she got which I surmise was from a limited setup.

Touch Me, I'm Sick is about as raw an album as you can get in a sense. These sounds seemed to me to try and be a direct representation of her emotional state. You have to respect that in some way. Does she have the ability to take it to the next level and present us with an album that excels in production as well? She might but she will most likely have to spend a little more time working out the details on her next effort

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