Most people know Suki Waterhouse in some way or another: Daisy Jones & The Six, her breakout single “Moves,” or her high-profile personal life. But those interactions rarely cohere into a clear artistic identity. What is her story? Who is she, if not a confounding figure in today’s pop landscape, a chameleon who can seem more like a cosplayer than a singular, definitive presence?
Waterhouse’s music has generally fallen into an inoffensive category, doing nothing particularly inventive yet still retaining her identity as a “cool girl.” Alas, chill cool vibes do not a music career make. They took her where she needed to go with “Moves” and “Devil I Know,” two of the most compelling tracks from her Sub Pop debut, I Can’t Let Go, on which her lax, dazed vocals became her signature. After Daisy Jones & The Six, though, she pivoted away from those touchstones, turning instead toward guitar-based Americana. None of it is bad, but little of it packs much of a thematic or sonic punch.
Waterhouse’s third album and Island Records debut, Loveland, comes wrapped in change and polished by new collaborative voices: mega-hit producers and songwriters Amy Allen, Joel Little, and Aaron Dessner. Though she’s kept her original creative partners in the fold, it’s hard not to feel the sheen on tracks like the “Espresso”-indebted “Happy With It.” Each producer leaves an obvious fingerprint, but you never feel when it’s Suki.
Waterhouse is stylistically swayable because of her lack of artistic perspective, which turns her music into anemic, radio-friendly pop that’s a little soulless. Because we can’t really pin her down sonically, that blurriness bleeds into her thematic identity, with writing that rarely fills gaps or paints a full picture of who she is or even who she wants to be to listeners. The premise of Waterhouse’s “brand,” so to speak, is to be an aspirational, mood-board-inspiring It Girl, and what we learn about her on Loveland is unrelatable to that extent.
She tries on different sounds across the Loveland tracklist, but some of the best moments come only when Waterhouse’s sound evokes the memory of more distinctive artists. “Teardrops” is where the record finally finds some steady footing, but that groundedness comes from how closely it recalls another artist’s style: Lana Del Rey. It’s in the beat, the lyrics, and the octave-up falsetto harmonies. All of this is to say: it’d be a great Lana song, but it’s not a Lana song, and that’s the problem.
“Puppy Dog Eyes,” tucked away on the album’s back half, contains some of Waterhouse’s more straightforward and vulnerable writing. It works because you can feel the real emotion behind it. It’s a song about self-sabotage, about trying to end a relationship but not being able to get all the way there. But you can’t really link this POV to the rest of the album; Loveland’s lack of narrative cohesion begs for something more emotionally rich.
Some of Loveland is catchy, but most of this record evaporates the second it’s over. The songs are pleasant enough in the moment that you don’t notice how little actually stuck until you’re trying to hum a tune back five minutes later. It’s frustrating precisely because Loveland is so polished, with so little room for the bombastic, all-consuming sounds that made so much of Waterhouse’s earlier work compelling. Three albums in, Loveland fails to answer the question we’ve been asking since I Can’t Let Go: Who even is Suki Waterhouse the musician?
