Bubble Treasure’s songwriting feels almost intentionally antithetical to Toxe’s club-centric past. The Siren she is, she spends most of the album luring us in and teasing us with a drop that never comes. The title track follows the sparse opener with what should shape up to be a dramatic banger—its heavy lead synths almost resemble witch house—but the payoff never hits; those synths just trudge on and on as her mesmeric vocals rain down (“I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care/Waterfall, waterfall”). Over soft keys, “Wishing Well” adds new pieces measure by measure before a piano refrain washes everything else away; instead of the elements rushing back in as we might expect, the song just drifts away as calm sets in.
Sunk deep in this sea of subversion is “Cranberry Glass,” a track that—in the process of actually completing its crescendo—rewards us with the euphoric payoff we’ve been gracefully swimming around all this time. The album’s usually gentle chimes are tensely arranged here, and Toxe’s vocals oscillate between unusual lows and her chilling falsetto. A resolution is finally in sight, and when it hits, a wash of gated synths and warped vocals crashes down like a tidal wave. What might have turned into the album’s most tired offering is actually its rarest treasure, a track that elegantly toes the line between refreshing experimentats and the usual expectations for a progressive electronic track.
Toxe picks only two moments to really swing for the fences. Her ambition absolutely hits on “Cranberry Glass,” but she strikes out on the other big swing, “A Girl Who Needs a Brain”—a track that admirably attempts to combine mermaid elegance and zombie ditziness (it even ends with faux cheerleading chant) but ultimately comes off as a distracting outcast to the album’s usually ravishing tales. It’s the one moment here where time is truly wasted; Bubble Treasure is otherwise dedicated to meaningful acts of discovery. By the time we arrive at the ephemeral “Winning” and “Onlything,” the beautiful piano ballads that close the album, we gaze upon a new horizon right alongside her; the little treasures she’s found along the way might just guide us all to the place she’s always been sailing toward.
