Photo by Lauren Davis
“It’s Frost Children’s world and we’re just living in it” — a claim boldly stated by the sibling duo’s PR. Just moments into their new album, SPEED RUN, it’s apparent that it’s not an overstatement. If you know nothing else about Frost Children, the best way for me to try and relay the vibe, in brief, is to point out that they causally dropped the “White Lotus” theme song during their PAPER Mag holiday party set at the end of last year.
Across SPEED RUN, out today on True Panther, it’s a little bit like you’re siphoned into different levels of a crazy-detailed RPG video game. “Like, oh my God? what the fuck? who are you? A stab from behind, a fucking coup,” we rip into on the first track “COUP,” and it only accelerates from there, with a briefly more laid-back delayed intermission from the 200mph feeling when Blaketheman1000 hops on for a verse in “WONDERLAND,” the penultimate track.
Throughout, it’s clear that Angel (she) and Lulu Proust (she/they) grew up listening to big room DJs, dubstep, and emo heavyweights of the early 2000s. They’ve mashed all of it together and dragged it through glitter and terrycloth tracksuits and self-tanner into the current day and age in which everyone knows how to do their own makeup so well and dress themselves so immaculately that when rules are broken, they’re broken so well. We’re living in a time where literally no one gives a shit what genre you fit into, as long as you’re doing something “raw” and or “honest.”
This is both of those with the added special sauce that’s particularly popular in New York — it’s very seriously unserious, in the sense that they’re very serious about constructing something so satisfyingly unhinged. That’s what gives it credibility; it’s polarizing in the way that only good art can be. Having been called “obnoxious, self-obsessed, painfully stylish, convinced of a sense of greatness they’ve yet to earn,” there are critics that don’t deign to accept the full-speed-throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks SPLAT of it. How do you earn greatness? You decide it for yourself.
You get synths and samples and vocal harmonies and beats that simulate a double kick drum you’d expect to hear in heavy metal whizzing by — all tied up with a bow (or maybe barbed wire?) of performable electronic pop music. It’s meant to be experienced in a club, one with extremely good people-watching potential that’s likely to end up in a trendy photo diary on Office, full of fits and flash photos. It’s every bit of 00s nostalgia, glitz, sleaze, hyperdrive, lyrical sass & swagger that you’d expect from an act that’s made it a point to act as absurd as they possibly can while they’ve got the spotlight on them. Frost Children are living in the moment, riding the high of making party music about the crushes and obsessions we all experience — no one is immune to those feelings, and the music is similarly infectious.