For years, Allie Hughes was well-known in the Toronto music scene for her own weird-pop music projects, as well as for being a finalist in CBC’s talent-competition show How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? Hughes caught everyone else’s attention (including Katy Perry’s) after she moved to Los Angeles, adopted the Allie X persona and released the self-produced, supremely catchy electro-pop jam Catch. Just over a year later: a smartly written seven-song EP that offers up a smorgasbord of indelible hooks and ’80s beats, with a side of melancholy, care of haunting synths, anxious drum sounds and sometimes-dark subject matter. The songs grab you from the opening bars, hook you with the chorus, tug your heart at the bridge and explode toward the finish. That knack for songcraft matches her spectacular voice, which sounds classically trained yet is malleable enough to suit her pop milieu. And while Haim, Young Galaxy, and, at one point, ’60s girl-pop group the Shangri-Las all come to mind, there’s not much bubble gum to be found. The record reeks of attitude: “Steal my bed, steal my heart, whatever it takes to get you up,” she shout-sings on codependent anthem Bitch, before barking “I’m your bitch! You’re my bitch! Boom, boom!” Hughes’ goosebumps-inducing vocal performance is near-spiritual on the record’s most earnest track, album closer, Sanctuary. It could be a musical theatre song, except electronic, and with gospel-y choral harmonies à la Man In The Mirror and Like A Prayer. In other words: pop perfection.
