Baynk: Adolescence (digital outlets)

In a telling comment, perhaps emblematic of where many artists are at present, the London-based electro-pop artist Baynk (Jock Nowell-Usticke, originally from Hawkes Bay) recently said about his new album Adolescence, “I was concerned that I didn’t have enough heartbreak or trauma to make decent art”.

Love, heartbreak and healing are the sustenance of pop songs, but increasingly artists are filling albums with their emotional autobiographies.

This becomes the album as therapy and a public announcement – accompanied by interviews, TikTok chats and Instagram posts – of their emotional state, however transient.

FKA Twigs said her new album Caprisongs – following her dark Magdalene fuelled by a break-up, bitterness, emotional meltdown and the price of fame – was about “falling in love all over again, but this time with music and myself”.

Billie Eilish and Lorde responded to fame on their recent albums and Adele's “divorce album” 30 – following previous heartbreak albums – is another equally cathartic album.

Not every artist is as successful as Adele. Madison Beer's debut Life Support last year was driven by her struggles with mental health (attributed in part to social media, where she seems a permanent resident), her sexuality and medication issues.

Dani Blum of Pitchfork was merciless:“Ambitious yet shallow, seemingly intent on proving its own seriousness”.

However last year Auckland's Merk delivered an intelligent exploration of that uncertain period between adolescence and adulthood on Infinite Youth.

Where Merk and Baynk succeed, albeit in different idioms, is they craft memorable pop songs drawn from reflection rather than rapid response. In Baynk's case with R'n'B singer Tinashe (on the classy single Esther which has had 5.5 million Spotify streams and Elton John played on his Apple Music show), the Australian electropop duo Cosmo's Midnight and others bringing diverse aural dimensions.

Of the steamy lyrics of Mine (two million streams) his collaborators , the Australian group Cub Sport, have said they were about coming to terms with their sexuality and a new relationship, “inspired by the very start of Sam and I getting together. Neither of us had really come to terms with our sexuality, so there was a lot of secrecy around it.

"With the joy and excitement of that came a heaviness of hiding a big part of who we were, and a lot of shame and fear about being queer and what would happen if our families found out. So overall it’s about the excitement of love accompanied by a fear of huge change.”

Serious for sure, yet it plays out like a sophisticated slice of soulful electro-dream pop.

So, although When I'm Alone is a sensitive song of loneliness and love, Touch Me and What If He Put His Hands On You are addictive slices of glitchy dance-pop. Remember with singer Rainsford is about another humid sexual encounter.

Baynk – looking to the joy and excitement of youth as his creative springboard and so dispelling the belief that happiness is the enemy of art – shouldn't be concerned about his deficit of trauma and heartbreak.

Sometime an intelligent, enjoyable pop album like Adolescence is all we require.

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Baynk's Adolescence is available now on digital platforms, CD and limited edition vinyl.