Yaeji – ‘With A Hammer’ review: taking a mallet to her rage

4 April, 2023

Initially breaking through on a crest of bold, euphoric dance music – the fogged-glasses deep house banger ‘Raingurl’ and a nu-disco infused take on Drake’s ‘Passionfruit’ – Yaeji took a more introspective turn when it came to 2020’s mixtape ‘What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던’. Though it still pulled heavily from the steady stomp of a dry-ice laden dancefloor, it paired its cold drum and bass beats and pulses of garagey Korg organ with something more drifting and exploratory.

After bottling up pure joy with her earlier releases – 2017’s ‘Yaeji’ and ‘EP2’ – the Korean-American artist’s XL debut felt like a peeling back of the layers, exposing the darkness bubbling right beneath the surface. Like dance-pop titan Robyn (who Yaeji expertly remixed back in 2019) she seemed to understand that sheer escapism often comes hand in hand with fleeing from something shadowy and corrosive.

READ MORE: Hammer Time: how Yaeji’s rage-fuelled debut liberated its creator

While this uneasiness previously manifested in the form of eclectic slower-tempo beats – the cavernously sluggish ‘These Days 요즘’ with its subtle licks of experimental jazz, or ‘Waking Up Down’s saccharine chill – debut album ’With A Hammer’ opens with ‘Submerge FM’s flutter of orchestral flutes, before quickly revving up into a gently simmering rage. “I was so pissed off, I thought I couldn’t hold it together,” she sings on the title-track. Towards the second half of the record, Yaeji also opens her arms to collaborators, with NYC producers K Wata and Enayet, Dry Cleaning reworker Nourished by Time, and UK dance producer Loraine James featuring at various points before the glacial closer ‘Be Alone In This’ isolates her once more.

‘With A Hammer’ frequently flits between vague flickers of hope and resigned nihilism. “There are times when you’re happy, times when you’re mad, that’s how it is,” Yaeji shrugs on ‘I’ll Remember For Me, I’ll Remember For You’ – the record’s sparse, brass-laden centrepiece. “It’s easy to get hurt, but I’ll write it down for me,” she sings, slipping seamlessly from Korean to English midway through the line. On ‘For Granted’ you can practically hear the brain-cogs gathering steam and spinning anxiously – “Am I saying thank you / Am I enjoying it too / Am I / Taking it for granted,” Yaeji wonders, as hiccuping vocal loops steadily build upon each other. When it all finally comes crashing down, in wave upon wave of rolling drum and bass, it feels like relieving pressure.

From the Pixies-esque grunge guitars and deadpan rap verses of ‘Fever’ to the haunting, Peter and the Wolf-style woodwind that reoccurs throughout, ‘With A Hammer’ shares the eclectic sensibilities of its predecessor, but hones it into something more subtly cohesive. Wielding her giant mallet like a kitschy comic-book hero and using it to tame her anger as glassy washes of synthesiser occasionally burble and stutter, this couldn’t be further from the immediate sugar-rush of Yaeji’s earliest hits. Thorny and tangled, this is dance music for drifting home from the club on deserted pavements; the moment of reflection after the euphoria fades.