Princess Chelsea (i.e. Auckland-based singer-songwriter Chelsea Nikkel) is probably best known for her viral hit The Cigarette Duet, a track off her debut album Lil' Golden Book (2011). Her off-kilter sensibility may not have won her a massive fan base, but she certainly earned a distinctive singularity within the indie scene; The Guardian's Everett True described her as "an intriguing irregularity surfing against tidal waves of in-your-face pop".
Nikkel took on a different approach for her second album The Great Cybernetic Depression (2015), marking a stylistic and thematic departure from her previous work. As Nikkel revealed to in an interview with , the concept of the album serves as a metaphor for her own personal depression:
"I made this album feeling pretty cynical and somewhat depressed about the world and finding the music industry pretty scary. Instead of calling the album "I'm depressed 2.0' (maybe that's a better title) and singing directly about this I decided to fabricate The Great Cybernetic Depression - a metaphorical world event (the social depression of the 2020's?) set roughly 10 years in the future. It is a metaphor for my literal depression and makes it more interesting to sing about as I can sing a song about a crappy relationship or how I hate everything while seamlessly weaving in-and-out of a narrative about the end of the world."
The stylistic formula that Nikkel uses throughout the album is apparent on "Too Many People": a slightly deadpan, almost affectless vocal delivery juxtaposed against bright, gleaming, space-age synths and keyboard notes, working in harmony to deliver a vision of technologically-induced isolation and alienation. Pitchfork's Sasha Geffen has singled out the track for being the album's standout:
""Too Many People" teeters on the fine edge that the rest of The Great Cybernetic Depression slips around. Chelsea sings of a city packed to the brim with miserable souls as keyboard lines sparkle beneath her, like "Eleanor Rigby" recast in Swarovski. Her lyrics are simple and her melodies even simpler, but the song hits like a fable marking an essential truth of her isolated post-urban condition. The Beatles' lonely Liverpool became our own lonely laptop screens: a million windows glowing, and none of them unlocked. Princess Chelsea presses something deep and sad between two narrow panes of glass: Everyone is closer to everyone else, but everyone is more scattered by the glut."
But the track's lyrics can also work outside the context of the album's concept - 'the people' that Nikkel describes could just as well be the population of a typically small-minded backwater town (or self-consciously modern and narcissistic model citizens of the nations of Facebook, Vine, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), who are too preoccupied with their own 'fucking shit' (Nikkel's unexpectedly nonchalant introjection of profanity is definitely a highlight of the song) to embrace a more expansive worldview:
'It's been ten yearsSince anyone was hereWho might have told the truthSo they stay insideSpeak white liesThey haven't got a clueToo many people(In this town)So many people(In this town)
It's a tragedyYou can't belive, what seeThere is no honestySo sad, for you and me
People don't know whenPeople don't careIf they should know youIn this town
They stay insideThey pick, they fightThey talk about themselves'
It's quite difficult to imagine another music act with the ability to dress up such scathing lyrical bile in such a beautiful, melodic and futuristic package - it may be hard to describe Princess Chelsea's brand of experimental indie music, but 'derivative' is certainly not a descriptor that would be used. As Nikkel herself admits, her music certainly doesn't play up to mainstream tastes, but its a strong candidate for critical acclaim in the indie world:
“I think I'll always be a cult artist who gets a bit of interest every now and again. I can't see myself getting real big, which is fine with me. I'm not going to be a huge pop star, it's not in my music, it's not in my skill set either. A successful indie artist would be the best I could do".
Elsewhere, 2015
