Our recurring feature series Track by Track sees artists guiding readers through each song on their new release. Today, indie pop and alternative hip-hop up-and-comer Audrey Nuna breaks down her new album, TRENCH.
Audrey Nuna’s style is a lot like the art for her new album, TRENCH: in your face, wild, weird, and nearly impossible to pin down. The artist’s sophomore effort — a double LP full of the most bananas alternative hip-hop/wacko indie pop you’ll hear this year — proves that she’s truly an unmatched creative force.
Nuna already sounded free from genre boundaries on her debut, a liquid breakfast, as well as on a handful of non-album loosies (including the irresistible “IdgaF,” which landed on our list of the best songs of 2023), but with TRENCH, the young up-and-comer breaks down barriers we didn’t even know were there. Whether she’s rapping, singing, or letting the killer production speak for itself, Nuna revels in the type of controlled chaos that comes from a restless mind chock-full of ideas.
While the project looks nowhere but up creatively, Nuna takes listeners through what she calls a “tapestry of growing pains” emotionally, from braggadocious bangers to lovesick bops to fleeting moments of dreaded introspection. Take the electro-fuckery of single “Suckin Up,” which swings between hard-as-hell and sweet-as-sugar, “Locket,” which boasts some of Nuna’s strongest and self-affirming hooks yet, or her stripped-down Tiny Desk Concert.
“I always imagine this song as a car speeding down a highway recklessly,” she tells Consequence of the song “1-Way.” “Separating from someone you love and adore is always going to have elements of confusion — I find it fascinating, this idea that there’s only really one way (if at all) to ever know, which is to go ahead and do it. And if you made a mistake, a lot of times it’s a one-way road and there’s no turning back to the way things used to be. It’s a lot of whiplash, both sonically and emotionally.”
If TRENCH is the result of growing pains, there just might be something to be gained out of that experience. Listen to the wildness of Audrey Nuna’s new album TRENCH below, followed by her Track by Track breakdown of the record.