Suki Waterhouse is finding her sound.
Suki Waterhouse’s sophomore album, Memoir of a Sparklemuffin, was released on September 13 and met with generally positive reviews from fans and publications such as The Independent, Metacritic, and Clash Magazine.
Standout songs from the album include Supersad, Blackout Drunk, My Fun, and Model, Actress, Whatever. Each of these mentioned songs has its sound, proving Waterhouse’s range that it was hard to see before (mostly due to every song released before this sounding identical to one another). Waterhouse has struggled in the past with finding her sound, and Sparklemuffin is but another stepping stone to getting there.
She hit the jackpot with the success of Good Looking and ran with it until she ran out of breath, but Sparklemuffin shows her complexities, motherhood, and womanhood in ways that wouldn’t have been possible even just a year ago, due to her success on the I Can’t Let Go tour, the birth of her child with Robert Pattinson, and her supporting role in Daisy Jones & The Six.
This album is no exception to Suki’s identical-sound syndrome, with many songs blending into one another in a murky, twee-adjacent muddle, with songs like Legendary and Lullaby failing to capture the full attention of the listener.
With that said, My Fun and Supersad are high-energy earworms that you’ll be hearing in your head for weeks to come. “When I wrote ‘My Fun,’ that was the first kind of upbeat song that I’d done that still felt like it was true to my palette and my world and that I liked. And I was like, “OK, I can write an upbeat song and not be cringed out by it,’” Waterhouse said in an interview with Associated Press. Gateway Drug has arguably the best instrumentals on the album, swelling in an amazing bridge and final chorus that’ll give you the chills; it’s an amazing introduction to the album that will make you excited for what’s to come. Blackout Drunk is a catchy, road-trippy type of song to listen to when you want to feel like a main character, and Model, Actress, Whatever is Suki’s reclamation of those titles.
I love consuming stories about people’s lives written by them, I love reading a memoir, I love reading from someone’s perspective what really went down, what really happened.
Suki Waterhouse on ‘Memoir of a Sparklemuffin’, Associated Press
These songs are easily some of the best that Waterhouse has created; it’s so easy to feel her attachment to this album, and if you give it the time of day, she’ll make you feel it, too.
Memoir of a Sparklemuffin can be found on all streaming platforms and purchased here.