“I want to believe there’s a motivation in negative spaces.”
With her unique fusion of genres—spanning pop, rock, electronic, and metal, all laced with an underlying dark tone—a full-on metalcore album felt like a natural progression for Poppy. Her recent collaborations with genre giants like Bad Omens, along with her second Grammy nomination for her feature on Knocked Loose’s “Suffocate”, solidified that belief for me. “Say Cheese”, a track tucked away in an EP with only one physical release, has always stood out to me as one of her most ambitious and compelling tracks. Because of this, I knew that whenever she decided to release a record like Negative Spaces, she wouldn’t disappoint. However, I never expected the metalcore record to be accompanied by such a raw, introspective, and painfully relatable concept. Typically, the focus of my music endeavours revolve around sound and feeling, but with Negative Spaces – appropriately titled as a metaphor for the topic at hand, I found that diving into the narrative made me appreciate this project on a personal level.
This album, lyrically, is poetic in its introspective and yearning nature, often underlined by a seldom restrained abrasiveness that adds to the intensity of the topic on each song. The interludes, “yesterday”, “tomorrow”, and “hey there” serve as markers for what I believe the critical points in this story are. In a general sense, Poppy seems to be looking back on the weight of yesterday and the mistakes it holds, while lingering (in negative spaces) as she leaves the awful labour of change for some undefined tomorrow. This is a concept so universally relevant, yet one I’ve never seen explored in the eloquent way Poppy does here.
In “have you had enough?”, she speaks directly to the exhausting cycle of her deferred plans. The title raises the question she wishes to answer on this emotional journey, challenging her to confront the pattern of always pushing the pain of healing for another, seemingly more convenient time. The instrumentation of this song is a notable departure from the electro-industrial pop of her 2023 LP, Zig, but we can’t be too shocked considering every project of hers makes a giant leap in style. Jordan Fish’s unmistakable production work is scattered all over Negative Spaces, a cornerstone to what makes this record’s execution so polished and nearly flawless.
The single “the cost of giving up” follows, detailing her struggle with inaction and the longing for an external force—or her later self—to pull her out, even as she admits it might be herself she’s running from. “they’re all around us” pushes us into the first piece of the puzzle with verses almost uncharacteristically heavy for her, effectively portraying the suffocation of her self-deprecation. Like the preceding track, this one releases the pressure of the verses with a momentarily triumphant chorus–similar in sound to the great “Circle With Me” by Spiritbox. This is backpedaled with the violent delivery of the title of the song, another example of how each of these tracks are titled with genuine care.
On “crystallized”, this inner turmoil shifts as Poppy speaks candidly about her inability to remain content and her search for a cure to her suffering. On top of a too-happy sounding, 80s inspired, dancey synthpop tune, she projects this desire onto God or through a man talking through speakers—both intangible figures that strip her of the unbearably responsibility of herself. On the alt-rock ballad, “vital”, a pivotal lyric is unveiled; “I want to believe there’s a motivation in negative spaces.” Poppy explicitly expresses this search for a reason to fight through the limbo between yesterday’s struggle and tomorrow’s damage control.
“nothing” reflects her awareness of the real reason she’s existing as she is. In a gorgeous chorus, Poppy sings on the knowledge that she continues to make the same mistakes, but is unaware of how to change, ultimately blaming herself for that shortcoming. This pressure boils to a fever pitch on her heaviest song to date; “the center’s falling out”. This cut opens akin to something from fromjoy, before playing out like a track from Knocked Loose‘s You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To. Poppy screams about how she’s observing herself drowning in her own pain, but simply does nothing about it. Her delivery is so vicious that it becomes detached from her, like she’s berating her nemesis, and in many ways, that is exactly what she’s doing. This level of honesty on the topic of self destruction and self loathing on this song feels foreign, and to pair that with contender for breakdown of the year is deserving of at least another Grammy nomination.
The second interlude, “hey there”, personifies her thoughts through a one-sided conversation with the listener and likely herself. The voice revists Poppy’s earlier contemplation; “Is there motivation in negative spaces? Or are we all just trying to restart?” The extension of this question reveals her own fantasy–one where she doesn’t have to rebuild herself and can just simply begin again. The juxtaposition of this dream-like track with the preceding song makes for a shocking change of pace, but one that makes sense in the context of this narrative where she’s revealing she wants a new way out, and in the title track, admits to feeling suicidal due to this constant negativity.
Finally, in the monotonous intermission “tomorrow”, she blatantly and bitterly confesses the illusion she’s hid behind by experiencing the futility of always postponing change. There’s a resigned wisdom here when she acknowledges this; “tomorrow doesn’t wait for me…but it’s not just for me anymore.” She speaks on her drive to create art and to entertain, recognizing that her purpose and motivation lies not only in self-expression, but in reaching others. This carries us into the exhausted and despondent, yet equally encouraging closer, “halo”. This is the first song on this album that appears as though she’s addressing her audience too, instructing us to look inward to see how far we’ve come and how much we’ve done. It’s an ode to lifting your head up, an acceptance of circumstance and a promise to persevere. The message of “halo” is so potent given the context that by the time the drums kick in, the tears are falling and it’s impossible to miss just how cohesive and cinematic this project feels.
Negative Spaces is more than just another sonic pursuit for Poppy; it’s a vulnerable, gripping confrontation with the torment we all face, but avidly avoid accepting within ourselves. Every song on this record feels like a new chapter and an advancement in the unfortunately familiar anecdote that she shares. Poppy is gifted in her ability to associate sound and genre with a feeling she wants to elicit in her audience–in this case, a viscerally honest exposé of self disengagement and hatred. No other work from her feels as thoughtfully crafted as Negative Spaces. I fear the point of this album might be overshadowed by its more obvious feature—the stark departure from much of her previous sound and the big names who had their hand in this LP.
As a die-hard fan of I Disagree, I had a hard time believing that anything Poppy could make would have me fully in awe of her sheer creative vision. While there was a song or two that I didn’t fully love in sound, Negative Spaces fully blew my expectations out of the water. This record deepened my admiration for her as an artist, solidifying Poppy as an inimitable force in music who is genuinely unafraid to push boundaries in both musical conformity and personal vulnerability.
9.5/10
Negative Spaces is out November 15th via Sumerian Records, and can be pre-ordered here.