“Another Life”, the first track on PinkPantheress' highly anticipated debut album, Heaven knows, opens with the ominous sound of an electrified cathedral organ. The collaboration with Nigerian musician Rema, in which the British singer wakes up next to her partner to find him dead, fittingly sounds like a funeral. “Can you please wake up baby? Now you scare me,” she sings, before coming to terms with her reality: “Guess you died today and I can't believe it. You lost your soul, you know you can't stop this.” It's the same sound of looming darkness that appeared in one minute trailer for the album, was released prior to his arrival. In the clip, a man with a thick voice that contrasts sharply with the singer's own soft tone muses: “The first time will be different for everyone. What will your experience be like?” This mystery – whether it refers to a first encounter with what awaits on the other side, or a person's first time living – sparks something in PinkPantheress, who embark on a search for meaning on the 13-song record.
PinkPantheress's preoccupation with mortality as it relates to romance — or the ways in which life goes on for everyone at home while thousands of miles away — will create familiar themes for listeners who have followed her rise so far. She explored similar ideas on her 2021 mixtape, To hell, and last year's Take me home ER. On these releases, UK garage and drum and bass collided with dark dance samples, as the singer made bite-sized looks at the angst surrounding fame, loss and growing up. Her revised approach to sound and fashion in the early 2000s immediately made her mark in pop culture, but she carefully maintained her physical anonymity for as long as she could and to this day protects her real name. Her early, anonymous beginnings on TikTok and Soundcloud left her a distinct place to retire. The songs on these releases barely reached two minutes. When she performed live, she was on and off the stage in a flash, while her bag rarely left her shoulder.
But throughout Heaven knows, PinkPantheress seems to be fully aware of how high the stakes have been raised. Songs hover comfortably between two and four minutes. The album also marks the first time the 22-year-old singer-songwriter-producer has recorded outside of London. Collaborations with big names such as Mura Masa, Greg Kurstin, London on Da Track, Cash Cobain and others led her to Los Angeles, where she has also taken root for the past two years. The farther he swims, the faster the shoreline begins to disappear. “How many times do I dream of reaching out?” he asks in “Blue”.
The hum of her new environment can be heard in the anguished stories she weaves on the album. The live instruments he introduces are mixed with layers of harmonies that provide the emotions he explores with rich sonic and emotional textures. It expresses a new curiosity about the people and resources it now has access to, and a sense of wonder that manifests itself in twisted “what if” scenarios. PinkPantheress collaborators on the album also play with ideas of connection and distance — when to open up and when to withdraw — like Ice Spice's emotional tug of war on “Boys a Liar, Pt. 2”, Central Cee's cheeky infidelity in “Nice to Meet You” and Kelela's resistance to being the first to commit in “Bury Me”.
Heaven Knows is split straight down the middle by “Internet Baby,” a starry-eyed interlude that nods to PinkPantheress's internet roots. “My SDs and USBs, you want all of that, and now you want to borrow my clothes,” she shouts. “You're a needy guy, but I guess I kind of like that,” he sings, still getting used to giving and receiving attention. “You're very strong, but I guess I kind of like that.” For someone who has maintained such a cautious stance during her brief rise, such cautious vulnerability can be seen as a great risk.
Fittingly, right after that moment of hesitant connection, tragedy reminds her why she's remained jaded for so long. Introducing the album's second half, “Ophelia” begins in a similar fashion to “Another Life,” except it's lighter, like the gentle strumming of a harp. The calm is disturbed by the sound of police sirens and drowned out vocals as PinkPantheress tells a cautionary tale of how ignoring your instincts can get you killed. “I can't believe the fear in me when I knocked on your door now/And when I walked in and realized I'm the only one who arrived, I wish I'd stayed home in bed because then I might have survived,” she sings, and it actually became the drowned Shakespearean heroine of the plays because of her own naivete.
On “True Romance,” PinkPantheress delivers her own take on Lady Gaga's “Paparrazi.” Over claps and acoustic guitar strums filled with the clicks of flashing cameras and cheering crowds, he yearns to stand out. “I'm in the crowd, do you see my hand?” he asks, pleadingly, “Take me on a tour, help me understand.” It's deliciously obsessive and utterly riveting, mirroring the urgency of her fantastical visions in “The Aisle,” where she haunts the one who got away. Even when she's faking a relationship with an alcoholic and her fairytale romance crumbles on the R&B “Feel Complete,” the singer's devotion runs deep.
Money is the PinkPantheress' other true love object on record. But her feelings for him are just as unknown and uncertain as her romantic explorations. It may offer her protection, but it also signals possible destruction. He wonders what would happen if he lost it all financially (“Mosquito” and “Blue”), romantically (the pop triumph “Capable of Love”) and in terms of his newfound sense of celebrity (the dizzying electro-pop cut “Feelings” , where he sings, “I realize I'm peaking too early/But I don't want it to make you worry/'Cause nobody ever told me”).
But if PinkPantheress often seems mired in fear and loneliness, she inhabits the LP's various cleansing states with the same confidence that made her early releases so appealing. She's never too distressed, or at least not enough to really lose touch with what seems to be forever slipping away – whether it's love, or money, or life itself. On Heaven knows, when PinkPantheress finds herself at a dead end, she simply builds a new path forward from scratch.