Porcupine

On her second EP, teenage New Zealander Molly Payton sings of “girls in cars and boys on speed.” It’s an arresting line that conjures images of going nowhere fast, an unfulfilling wasteland of apathy and broken dreams that perfectly fits alongside her sweetly melodious but distorted slacker rock. *Porcupine* is no self-indulgent wallow, though. Payton expertly takes the retro grunge sound of beabadoobee and pairs it with attention-grabbing vocals that veer from the lung-busting theatricality of Florence Welch to the eye-rolling insouciance of Billie Eilish. She’s a frustrated deadbeat whose penchant for wry self-deprecation shows that, more often than not, the principal target of that frustration is Payton herself.*Porcupine* shows a maturity that belies Payton’s relatively short career and is most affecting in the moments where she briefly lets her guard down. Slight vocal cracks adorn the EP, but it’s the delivery of the line “It doesn’t matter to me who you are/Just a warm body” that is the most candidly disarming moment of the release.