“Gonna make it perfect/Better than it has been.” When Vu proclaims, wisely, “I’m tryna make it cool/.Don’t tell me that I’m wrong/’Cos ain’t nobody right,” it feels like her personal aesthetic thesis. “Cool” is Vu’s understated loner anthem about hiding out and staying home to work on yourself: “It’s OK to be alone/’Cos I’m gonna make it happen,” she sings. “426” has a melancholic, retro shuffle with shades of Lana Del Rey cool. The entire song conveys loneliness and comfort at once.Īcross the minor keys and twinkling chords of How Many Times, Vu sings about mundanity, failure, disappointment, and fear. “Take the red line into downtown/I’m trying to escape you.” Her richly layered vocals feel like a long sigh, like infatuation steadily deflating, like a cold stare. “In my dreams I’m in that gray room/In my chest I’m feeling dark blue,” Vu sings, evoking the colors of her mood music. It is a muted daydream with a wobbly bass sway, the sound of quiet longing and a resigned single tear, of a person who really is trying to just get by. Instead, “Crying on the Subway” is emotionally vacant in a way that feels real. The song doesn’t convey the claustrophobia so typical of city music, like Chandra’s “ Subways,” nor does it contain the gut-wrenching despair of girl-group weepers. Her elliptical sensibility makes “Crying on the Subway” more subtle and restrained than you’d expect. How Many Times spans such styles as loungey downbeat pop and yearning indie rock balladry, but it is all tied together by a charmingly droll vibe and Vu’s deep, soulful voice.
Vu’s primary mode is electronic dream pop with streaks of misery that feel discernibly teenage: “I’m always on the phone/I’m always doing nothing,” she sang on the 2016 album Sensitive, which included a collaboration with Willow Smith called “ Queen of High School.”
Her version of bedroom pop is one that clearly aspires to a slick, sophisticated level of production, like that of Jay Som. Following three-and-a-half years of self-released material from Vu-who has used Bandcamp like an emotional diary, in the vein of Frankie Cosmos and Soccer Mommy- How Many Times is her first release for the label Luminelle Recordings (run by the folks behind the still-kicking MP3-download-era blog Gorilla vs. “Crying on the Subway” is the lead track from her EP, How Many Times Have You Driven By, a coolly minimal collection that the 17-year-old recorded and produced on her own.
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