Norwegian EDM producer Cashmere Cat's (real name Magnus August Høiburg) second studio effort, PRINCESS CATGIRL, is often too cutesy for its own good. Just seven tracks long, the album runs just under the nineteen–minute mark, and Cashmere Cat informed his listeners on Twitterthat this short length would make the project more potent when listened to “without interruption.” Unfortunately, this overly sweet pastiche falls flat. Though technically a concept album, PRINCESS CATGIRL fails to tell us anything significant about its titular character.
PRINCESS, like Cashmere Cat’s 2017 debut, 9, is a mix of EDM, pop, and trap that would be impossible to create without the Internet and music–sharing websites like Soundcloud, where Cashmere Cat published his first remixes. Thus, his music is not only born online, but it is fundamentally of the Internet. Where 9 relied on A–list features like Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez to carry most of its weight, PRINCESS relies on Cashmere Cat himself. And where 9 seemed designed for big festival stages and dance floors, PRINCESS reads like background music to put on while browsing the Internet.
In a press release for the new album, Cashmere Cat states that the character of Princess Catgirl was created “to be the face of [his] music,” due to his own shyness, saying, "she’s very cute and powerful." Princess Catgirl functions as a persona for Cashmere Cat to both hide behind and create through. Quite plainly, she is a fantasy, a surreal and unreal character that exists for its own sake without context or (adequate) explanation online.
From the start of “FOR YOUR EYES ONLY” to the closing title track, the listener is assaulted with an onslaught of pitched–up vocals, repetitive lyrics, and surprisingly abrasive beats. At best, the music is hypnotic, casually upbeat, and soothing all at once. At worst, as on tracks like “MOO” and “PRINCESS CATGIRL,” it is annoyingly cloying.
With that being said, despite the lack of substance or originality to PRINCESS, the sound design is fun and tactile throughout, as in the case of highlights “WATERGIRL” and “BACK FOR YOU” (the latter features production credits from the enigmatic producer/pop–star SOPHIE.) However, even the innovative production of PRINCESS can’t save the project from a general malaise that makes it easily blend in with the rest of today’s EDM and trap projects.
In the music videos for “EMOTIONS” and “FOR YOUR EYES ONLY,” Princess Catgirl, played by Margaret Qualley, prances around in a forest, at times looking scared. During the last twenty seconds of the video for "EMOTIONS", the camera cuts to Qualley, wearing a motion–tracking suit, slow dancing with Cashmere Cat, while Princess Catgirl dances alone on a screen behind them.
There is something almost painfully endearing and poignant about those final moments. However, for the most part, the visuals, like the accompanying album, are trite and lifeless.
This album was made to be streamed and forgotten, not felt or experienced. Ultimately, PRINCESS CATGIRL is a small, distilled, kawaii pipe dream, optimized to entertain for fifteen minutes and leave no trace.
