Album by The Femcels

What the hell am I listening to?

That was pretty much my first reaction to I Have to Get Hotter, the debut album from the Femcels.

There’s so much happening here that it’s hard to get your bearings. The music is noisy, layered, hyperactive, and all over the place. Electronic pop breaks into something else, the vocals change shape, and just when you think you might have figured out what’s going on, the whole thing takes another left turn.

At times, it sounds like two video game characters came to life, saw the absurdity of the world, and decided to make crazy music about it. They don’t seem particularly worried about the consequences because they have unlimited lives. Oh, that didn’t work? No problem. I’ll just respawn and try a different combo of electronic beats and vocals.

There’s a playful, almost cartoonish quality to a lot of this, and a sense of humor that I found both funny and disorienting.

I Have to Get Hotter sometimes feels like being invited into a room where a couple of people are sharing this great inside joke. They tell you to come in and listen, but the moment you try to join in, you get the feeling they’re wondering what the hell you’re doing there, like you’re eavesdropping on a conversation that wasn’t really meant for you.

The music reflects that feeling. There’s a lot of hyperactive electronic pop, with sounds and vocal styles that seem to change by the second.

“No One Will Fuck Me When I Wear Two Different Shoes (One Jordan, One Gucci Flip Flop)” sets the tone with its frantic energy and absurd take on dating anxiety. “He Needs Me (Ike Mix)” has that same sense of an inside joke getting out of hand, with its wild repetition and unexpected connection to the song from Popeye. “Please Don’t Stab Yourself (Like Elliott Smith)” pushes things into even more abrasive territory, with a chaotic, almost circus-like sound that can be as overwhelming as it is intriguing.

Not everything is operating at that level of mayhem. “Is Loser An Emotion You Feel Too?” gives those outsider feelings a little more room to breathe, while “Monster In You” takes a more focused, ominous approach, using its repetitive synths and whispering vocals to create something genuinely unsettling.

The album keeps shifting between these different moods, never allowing one sound or approach to settle in for too long.

And underneath all that noise, humor, and absurdity, there’s some real vulnerability here. Songs like “I’m So Fat” and “Indiest Girl At School” get into body image, appearance, and the anxieties surrounding how other people see you. There are also plenty of uncomfortable feelings around dating, desirability, and fitting in. These are real things, even when the music treats them in the most ridiculous way imaginable.

It sometimes feels like reaching into a thorn bush to get at something precious. You can tell there’s something in there worth reaching for, but you have to be careful about how you go about it.

That’s an interesting aspect of I Have to Get Hotter. The vulnerability doesn’t come wrapped in melodrama, with everything laid out for you to absorb. It’s tangled up with the jokes, the satire, and the willingness to make a mess of things.

The Femcels seem just as interested in making you uncomfortable as they are in letting you recognize something familiar in what they’re singing about. I can’t say exactly what they intend with every choice, but the combination of absurdity and genuine insecurity gives the album more to it than the initial sensory overload might suggest.

I’ll be honest: this music really isn’t in my lane. I admire the creativity, and I think there’s something smart and funny about the way the Femcels take the piss out of social expectations and the anxieties that come with trying to fit in. There’s a little darkness mixed in with all the silliness, and that tension is what kept me interested even when the music itself was a bit much for me.

I Have to Get Hotter is a strange, unruly, occasionally abrasive album that doesn’t seem particularly concerned with making itself comfortable for the listener. But there’s a lot of imagination here, and the humor has more going on beneath the surface than you might expect.

Verdict: Worth a Spin

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