underscores: Wallsocket - Director's Cut (2LP, deluxe edition) [MOM+POP]

Why you'll love it

The Director's Cut spreads Wallsocket across two LPs and 16 tracks, with "Locals (Girls Like Us)" featuring Gabby Start and "Johnny Johnny Johnny" among them. Critics praised its frenzied production and character-driven story, and several publications put it on their year-end lists.

This edition

• Deluxe Director's Cut edition
• 2LP set, 16 tracks

About the album

Most pop records are set in a mood; Wallsocket is set in a town, and the town doesn't exist. underscores invented Wallsocket, Michigan, complete with websites for an alternate reality game, and wrote the album about three girls growing up there, taking in religion, corporate life, gun violence and class resentment along the way. The songs were written on acoustic guitar first, with country and blues in mind, and then blown up into the hyperactive collage of pop, rock and folk she's known for.

She made it with a bigger budget than her 2021 debut Fishmonger, and you can hear the money in the best possible way: "Locals (Girls Like Us)" is a glitter bomb of a single, while the slower songs give the story room to breathe, and Henhouse! and Jane Remover turn up as guests. The Director's Cut gives the town a few more streets to wander. Michigan's tourism board has yet to comment.

Tracklist

Listen

On Mom + Pop (cat# LP-MP-774X), a deluxe edition of the 2023 album.