Memoir of a Sparklemuffin [CD]

Suki Waterhouse’s music sounds like a collage of her inspirations, experiences, and emotions stitched together by honeyed vocal delivery, bright-eyed melodies, and evocative storytelling. It doubles as a mirror image of her life as a consummate creative, artist, actress, model, and mother, yet it also breaks the glass to unveil raw truth. She leans on an ever-evolving sonic palette to convey what she’s feeling—whether it be folky Americana, nineties alternative, turn-of-the-century indie, or handcrafted otherworldly pop. You’ll hear Suki’s longing in a swooning chorus, fearlessness in a crunchy chord, elation in a danceable waltz, and wonder in a soft coo befitting of a lullaby. Now, the platinum-certified songstress asserts herself as a versatile, vibrant, and vital presence on her 2024 double-LP, Memoir of a Sparklemuffin [Sub Pop]. 

She faithfully followed a lifelong passion for music to her 2022 full-length debut, I Can’t Let Go. Adorned by “Moves” and “Melrose Meltdown,” it incited widespread critical applause from Variety, Nylon, NME, The Line of Best Fit, and more. Between headlining shows and touring with Father John Misty, “Good Looking” surged online, generating nearly a billion streams, going RIAA platinum, and paving the way for the Milk Teeth EP and her sold-out, headlining Coolest Place in the World Tour. Simultaneously, Suki’s life moved at lightspeed. She absorbed inspiration from a season of change earmarked by unforgettable moments a la gracing the stage of Lollapalooza 2023, performing on multiple continents, becoming a mom, and closing out the Gobi Tent at Coachella in 2024. 

Along the way, she carefully assembled Memoir of a Sparklemuffin. Beyond listening to everyone from Camera Obscura to The Raveonettes, Bloc Party, and The Teenagers, she took advantage of her proximity to various collaborators.

“I finished the record in the last few months of my pregnancy and turned my living room into a home studio,” she recalls. “I stopped going to big studios and enclosed myself at home for the last two months of being pregnant, and the best thing about LA is you can call up the most incredible musicians in the world and have them in your front room in 15 minutes!”

She brought this body of work to life with Executive Producer Eli Hirsch (courtship.) as well as Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty, Beyonce), Brad Cook (Bon Iver, War on Drugs, Snail Mail), Greg Gonzalez (Cigarettes After Sex), Rick Nowels (James Blake, Lana del Rey), and Natalie Findlay and Jules Apollinaire of the band Ttrruuces (with whom she co-wrote “Good Looking” and “OMG”). 

She loosely tethered these 18 tracks to a transformative central concept represented by the Sparklemuffin spider….

“I always put the past into what I make because I feel like you need to keep exposing darkness to sunlight. When it’s exposed, it heals. I wanted a totem of metamorphosis, but I didn’t feel like a butterfly. I felt more like a scrappy spider,” she laughs. “I came across the Sparklemuffin—which is wildly colored, does this razzle-dazzle dance, and its mate will cannibalize it if she doesn’t approve of the dance. It’s a metaphor for the dance of life we’re all in. The title felt hilarious, ridiculous, and wonderful to me. 

She initially teased the record with “OMG,” “Faded,” and “My Fun,” drawing listeners into Sparklemuffin’s sticky stylistic web. The propulsive gallop of the single “Supersad” bursts out of the gate, kickstarted by fast-paced drum fills and garage-y guitars. On the hook, she reminds, “There’s no point in being supersad.” “I tried to write a nineties song you could hear playing at the mall in Clueless or as an opening track for Legally Blonde,” she smiles. 

Then, there’s “To Get You.” Recorded to tape and co-written with Greg of Cigarettes After Sex with production by Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, her vocals glide over softly strummed acoustic guitar, a delicate bassline, and a distant backbeat. She exhales, “Honey, you’ll never know, what I did…to get you.”

“I know I've experienced sadistic and fetishized love, and this song was about everything I had to go through in order to find love in a pure form,” she notes. “It’s a difficult journey to discover peace within yourself and share your heart with another person. I didn’t always imagine it for myself. You can picture a girl scouring the streets for ‘the one’.” 

“Blackout Drunk” intoxicates with its swinging handclap-laden bounce, woozy riffing, doo-wop harmonies, and chantable chorus. She sets the scene, “There’s always the guy who can’t keep his shit together on a night out. It just doesn’t need to happen! She’s furious and falling asleep next to him, but she can’t wait to wake him up and tell him all the shitty, embarrassing things that he did last night.”

“Gateway Drug” illuminates the dynamics of the record. Drums lumber beneath her ethereal intonation as guitars rev up in a rush of distortion. “There’s a massive crash, and it’s a huge release of energy,” she smiles. 

Among other standouts, “Model, Actress, Whatever” instantly transfixes, threading a lilting acoustic guitar melody through hazy verses. Emotion overflows on the swooning hook, “All of my dreams came true, the bigger the ocean, the deeper the blue, call me a model, actress, whatever.”

Ultimately, Suki’s unapologetically being herself on the album, and it’s wonderful to hear, see, and feel.

“I just hope this can be the soundtrack to somebody’s life,” she says. “Whenever I'm making music, I always try to remember why I started writing in the first place and continue to do so. If I truly capture something pure that I’ve gone through, I know it’ll resonate with other people.”