Daine is to ketamine what Tame Impala is to acid. The Filipino-Australian artist’s best songs are cool to the touch: over two mixtapes and a handful of singles released since 2020, they gaze into the dreadful violence of existence with a chilly insouciance and a thousand-yard stare. Online, they have spoken about their experience with chronic pain and disability, as well as the “fire and anger … that I’ve carried from my mum and grandma’s generational trauma”.
And yet on their latest tracks they metabolise that wrath into steely resolve, dispelling any hints of injury with impish ripostes and garish techno.
At 21, Daine has already worked with hyperpop’s most visible emissaries: Charli XCX (whom they count as a mentor), Danny L Harle, Hannah Diamond and 100 Gecs’ Dylan Brady. Hyperpop may be too limiting a label to inscribe on Daine’s omnivorous tastes but they do share with the genre a love of artifice – of pop’s ability to both conceal and embolden.
After a string of early tracks indebted to the plaintive pleas of midwestern emo, Daine broke out in 2021 with Boys Wanna Txt, an eye-rolling kiss-off to clingy admirers. “I don’t really care/Steady makin’ bands,” they deadpan in a display of braggadocio: an introduction to Daine as pop persona, Daine as antagonist.
Their most recent song, Shades On, released earlier this month, bottles the invincibility of an artificial high. It is a lurid ode to bloghouse – that distinctly late-noughties spin-off of dance music where partying prevailed above all and bursts of camera flash regularly illuminated narcotised club rats who hadn’t showered in weeks. From its opening notes – a raucous babble, a growling bassline – Shades On sounds like a Cobra Snake photo album; like leaving the world behind for the chemical pleasures of the dancefloor. It resurrects Uffie’s brattiness – and then it actually resurrects viral rapper Kreayshawn, the era’s bawdiest, brashest practitioner, in a suitably crude guest verse.
Daine’s delivery is hilariously direct: “K-hole in the club, I love money, I love drugs,” they proselytise, a cash register echoing in the distance. They survey the scene from behind oversized sunglasses. They are untouchable to a plebeian like you or me. As they say in a Dork magazine interview: “I just hate that pressure of having to be so accessible to everybody. It ruins the magic.”
For more: Listen to Daine’s 2023 singles Cut My Heart Out and Bite Back, as well as their mixtapes Shapeless and Quantum Jumping.
This month Guardian Australia also listened to …
Ausecuma Beats – Dakar Bamako (2 February)
Fourteen musicians working across three cities in Australia, Senegal and Mali, all driven by the djembe – a west African drum that buoys these songs of homecoming and exaltation.
Molly Lewis – On the Lips (16 February)
A prodigious whistler who featured, memorably, on Kirin J Callinan’s viral single Big Enough. Each warble is transportive, drifting and dissolving like a glamorous memory. This is her first album.
Middle Kids – Faith Crisis Pt 1 (16 February)
Another thunderous dose of open-road anthems from Australia’s foremost powerpop group. All the endless expanse and catharsis of the highway.
Yirinda – Yirinda (16 February)
A cinematic debut record from a Brisbane duo: Butchulla songman Fred Leone, who conveys vast emotional terrain in native language, atop Samuel Pankhurst’s winding, quivering strings. They are touring in March and April.
Arse – Kaputt (23 February)
Polemics and purgatorial bellows from the Sydney punk trio, who bottle the daily grievances of life and expel them at full volume. Arse are playing some East Coast shows in April.
