While ramping up for the release of “Glitch Princess” in 2022, the heavily conceptual and intricate artist Yuele made it clear that they identified as a cyborg. This was a fitting identity for the image that donned the electro-pop album cover: a stiff, animatronic, feminine body complete with green pigtails and translucent skin that reveals metal gears within them. The cover for Yuele’s new album “softscars,” however, takes the same ‘skeletal’ outline from “Glitch Princess,” but swaps the old metallic feel for a jagged, human one. This time around, there is an actual picture of Yuele whose posture is tilted, slumped almost, rather than animatronically perfect as seen before. They are dressed in black with zippers, strings, jewelry, and tubes attached to their clothes and draped over their shoulders. Their pigtails are white and many of their personal tattoos decorating their neck and arms are visible. If Glitch Princess is an avatar, then the person shown on “softscars” is the Yuele that created and projected such an image. Simply by juxtaposing the two album covers, the themes and tones that Yuele sets out to cement throughout “softscars” reveal itself to us. This iteration of Yuele is brushed by the infinity of the internet, where they previously found themselves to be a cyborg, but remains human despite it.
Conceptually, the album uses gore and violence as a vessel to experience humanity, but more specifically, love. In the title track, “softscars,” Yuele chronicles being intoxicated with a lover, who they let consume them completely, maim her weapons, and leave a bloody mess in their wake. Sung over synths and drums, Yuele’s chorus echoes, “You stabbed me right in the chest/You made me bleed, you made me wet … drained with love,” and before the imagery can even be properly registered, she wraps it up by saying, “It’s sweet, I think?” Picture Yuele: open wounds and bleeding out, and the only thought occupying their mind is how they might taste to the person who opened them up. The song concludes with Yuele and this lover splitting their separate ways, unable to fit into each other’s lives sustainably. But, when all is said and done, they are left with soft scars, a physical marker of the intensity of their experiences. This love has opened them up and scarred them, but they grow both because of and in spite of it. On the track “bloodbunny,” the soft scars become data. Being consumed by someone else reappears on “cyber meat” when Yuele proclaims, “bite me vampy/ I taste just like candy” — a line obviously more tongue-in-cheek, but visible nonetheless. There is an apparent desire to be picked apart at the hands of another, to be torn and bitten and cut open. As visceral as this imagery often appears, when reduced to its simple imagery — teeth and hands on skin — it’s about touch, desire, and human connection. Yuele is someone who struggles with body image, often open about fighting a forever fluctuating battle with eating disorders. It’s an internalized expression of coping, a way of pulling inward and withdrawing from being present. Yuele’s experience indicates that when they paint these intense, cannibalistic scenes in their music, it stems from the desire to brutally externalize all of the good as a way of reclaiming everything bad they angle at themself. Their musical outlet is explosive because when a person intensely dissociates from their own body, the only fathomable connection (or reconnection) is the most extreme. So on “sulky baby” when Yuele croons, “I wanna eat your face,” it’s an intimate declaration of love.
Sonically, the actual soft moments on “softscars” are brief, often interrupted by hazy synths, glitchy noises, or reverberating echoes. “fish in the pool” stands out amongst the tracks because it serves as an interlude, a piano instrumental that Yuele weakly hums over. It’s a moment of calm amidst everything eerie, a structural contrast compared to the album’s frequent intense and purposefully in-your-face noise. The opener “x w x” (which only as I am writing this becomes obvious that it is meant to resemble an innocent, puckering face) roars to life with Yuele chanting over a steady drum that matches her cadence. It’s hard to imagine how the song can pick up from there, but the song rides the intensity until the end, crescendoing with Yuele screaming about God, creation, skin, and love. Both “daizies” and “4ui12” are alt-rock tracks that masterfully weave together heavy instrumentation featuring electric guitar and drums, making the songs slightly uncomfortable by using a mix of distorted synths and unorthodox vocal delivery. If the theme is the eruption of love and burning into one’s humanity, the noise makes sense.
The album concludes with a messy human arrival at identity with the track “aphex twin flame.” After spending the previous 36 minutes chronicling bloody, ghostly, unrequited love, the last song on the album is a reconciliation with themselves. The song begins with desperation as Yuele is ready to do anything for her lover, breaking their knees if the other needs bone, but then switches back to Yuele as they grapple with what it means to live inside their body: “I have one name/aphex twin flame, artificial/feel so special.” Their existence, their ability to tangibly and intangibly make impressions on others, to give and take, to hurt and love; it all composes who they are. Whether they are cyborg or human, or a little bit of both, there is a desire to hold onto humanity, to explore and cherish all the pain and love that it brings.
“softscars” as an album presses pain and love into the same coin. By no means is this meant to glorify abuse or self-harm in the name of love, and if these things are conflated then there needs to be a personal reconciliation with your definition of love. However, I believe that Yuele is using dramatic, brutal imagery to reconcile their own arrival at love. Maybe if it’s bloody and messy, if it’s imperfect and human, they can learn what it means for them. Because humanity, sometimes, is just skin on skin.
Notable tracks: sulky baby , x w w, dazies, cyber meat
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
