Better Before

Plastiscines came back, and I don’t know why that hits so hard. Their debut LP1 with Loser and Mr Driver landed like a whisper—nobody heard it, I bought it twice—and I played it until the novelty should have worn off but didn’t. The thing is, the album was good. And Katty Besnard singing it, I can’t separate what I thought about the music from what I thought about her. I was into her. Still am, if I’m being honest.

They’re back now with label backing and a brand new sound. Barcelona gets playlists. They get features. The production is cleaner, smarter, everything a debut should have been. Except it doesn’t work on me the way LP1 did. Something’s missing. That thing that made LP1 feel like it was only mine—like I’d found a secret that nobody else cared enough to notice—that’s gone.

I liked them more before. When they had nothing to lose and sounded like they didn’t care who was listening. Now you can hear the caution in every note, the sense that they’re thinking about how they sound. And I can’t unhear it.

Some stupid part of me still plays LP1 and remembers being into Katty. That part hasn’t changed.