REIN - God Is A Woman (2023) Hi-Res

Swedish superhuman all-rounder and avant-pop wunderkind Rein recently released her second album, this time on her own label.

Among the many philosophical and theological debates brought about by Kevin Smith’s magnum opus Dogma, (1999), a movie about two fallen angels who attempt to break back into heaven through a doctrinal loophole, thus proving God is infallible and therefore negating the entire existence of humanity, is that God is a woman she is, in fact, Alanis Morrisette. Unfortunately, the voice of God is too mighty for the tiny human brain to comprehend, and the sound of it only brings devastation.

The voice of REIN, and the face and the focal point, the eponymous polymath, responsible for the vast majority of the work here is releasing this, her second album, on her label. following on from the very well-received REINCARNATED and several singles including the frankly magnificently titled I Don’t Get Anything But Shit From You. God Is A Woman is a step forward from that excellent pop debut, because the depths of the cultures it is exploring are deeper, its roots buried sometimes closer to the surface, sometimes further away. The art here should not go unnoticed, it deserves gallery walls.

Song one, How’s It Gonna Be? Is a mature, fast-paced frisky thing, a drunk politician on an icy street, it skitters in an eighties way via modern production, Miley Cyrus and Propaganda fighting over a Goth bass synth line, drums to the front. Heavily filtered vocals help to create a different set of voices, particularly between what would be Sides One and Two in old Money, it houses the ghosts of several mid-nineties obscure dance tracks.
Mutual Satisfaction carries on similarly, sleek and Kraftwerkian, new but familiar, a comfortable trip in a sensible car.

Kiss You Goodbye wanders in ice cool, keyboards stab and sequence, a nod to Donna Summer and Moroder in general, it could easily soundtrack one of Besson’s fantasy movies about impossibly beautiful assassins. Snakes slows down a little, drums like tiny detonators, voices sampled as percussion.

Snakes is when you realize that for every modern and state-of-the-art piece of electronica moulded around the melodies, there is almost always a big single chord, sometimes arpeggiated that fits neatly into the background. More noticeable on the slower songs, it very much has the John Foxx/early Ultravox swing, machine music made emotional.
Refuse The Pressure is Gothic but robotic, Siouxsie meets Leftfield on a Germanic dancefloor, drums galore once again, percussion and silence become lead instruments then stop.

Side Two seems a sort of mini-opera or half of a concept album. God Is A Woman, title track and dystopian soundscape where there’s no doubt that the Terminators won, with only a slow march to death to console us, the drums persuade us to move, slowly at first, while the vocals can only mourn us, the dancing gone, at least for now. There’s little hope in the lyrics as they juxtapose with the joy of the music, all heartbreak and S&M metaphors, pain stripping away the art.

No Rules is a harsh Timbaland/Missy Elliott fistfight, Jamie XX watching on expectantly, bat in hand. No Rules is a beautiful few moments of Art, so metallic and seemingly without human contact, yet somehow touching, like Hal powering down and singing his nursery rhyme endlessly.

Power and Passion bring us right up to date despite that Duran Wild Boys keyboard sound, an East European workout routine in Chernobyl safety suits, the glare of white light replicated by the vocals, and voices raised but not too much. For You is downbeat but blissful, with a gorgeous repeated vocal sample acting as the hook, the sound of an Ibizan sun setting.

There’s No Tomorrow has a Soft Cell at its best riff, while the vocal follows the melody and a Nordic precision draws us home. There are so many touchstones of past brilliance here, from Robyn to Garbage, Roxanne Shante to New Order, and yet its majesty is that it coalesces into more than the sum of its admirable parts becoming first-rate twenty-first-century Electronica of note. it’s best to take it all in as a whole piece while turning it up slowly so no one notices.