Sexistential

Robyn sounds right at home on a kooky new album that refines the luminous synth palpitations of Body Talk to explore sexuality, sentimentality, and the creation of life.

The thrill is her commitment to right now, and the new Robyns she’s got in her future. And on Sexistential, she sounds ready to let them all go hit the dance floor.

Gone are the soft edges and pulsing, sensual house of her previous album Honey, and back are the sharp electronic sounds of 2010’s Body Talk through a new lens.

Nothing here feels ill-fitting, which is testament to the steady, seasoned collaboration between Robyn and Klas Åhlund, as well as ‘Sexistential’’s capacious vision. .... ‘Sexistential’ is a blaze of audacity that invigorates the whole record.

Outside of it["Sexistential"], nothing on the album is patently bad, but the case remains that it’s easier than ever to predict her next move, song by song. .... Despite my gripes, there’s more than enough here to sustain another eight-year hiatus from making albums.

A slimmed down project that is over before you feel it really hits its stride, it exists in an uneven nether space that continues Robyn’s legend in some ways and takes some of the shine off it in others.

Sexistential doesn’t reinvent the wheel so much as reaffirm how Robyn keeps it spinning so smoothly.

Sexistential is a stunning search for self-acceptance after motherhood and a long-term relationship coming undone.

Vibrant, unapologetic and expertly crafted, Sexistential may not be a stunning leap forward like Honey, but when Robyn sings "I'm still having fun," her joy is contagious.

Sexistential is everything you want from a good electronic pop album – sexy, catchy, modern, chic and – crucially in this case – believable. To Robyn’s credit, none of her boasts sound cheesy or arrogant.

Returns to the Max Martin collaborative bangers that first turned the world onto Robyn. That pop brilliance runs through ‘Dopamine’, the driving beat of ‘Talk To Me’, and the rousing chorus of ‘Into The Sun’.

Being a mother lends Robyn a new perspective on her usual studies of love and the dance floor. .... This is not to say that there aren’t great tracks on here that hit with all the hallmarks of a classic Robyn banger. There are many.

The Swedish pop innovator take charge over nine expertly produced tracks, exploring matters of sexuality, relationships and desire with playful candour. It’s brilliant, too; Robyn’s voice is commanding but also curious, enveloped by tremendous salvos of house and electronic sounds.

Sexistential is Robyn at her most lucid, practicing at liberation and assuredness now with this singular caveat of reinhabitation that doesn’t celebrate Robyn as a pop iconoclast with thirty years of consistent brilliance on the scoreboard – or doesn’t only; rather, she wields that in the creation of a self-mythology that also manages to sound brilliant on its own merit.

The titular track shines a light up to the album as a whole – fun, endearingly cringeworthy, luxury pop music.

It’s a real pleasure to hear Robyn embrace a more restless production style and raise the stakes on her own formula.

Sexistential (Young) arrives not as a nostalgia exercise or victory lap, but as proof that Robyn’s particular synthesis of pleasure, vulnerability and pop rigor remains maddeningly hard to replicate.

Sexistential is urgent, direct, and strikingly concise.

Sexistential is a document of Robyn the artist reaching full potential, thanks to Robyn the human reaching inner peace.

With just nine tightly constructed and sonically consistent songs, the record is a fleeting rush, but what keeps it from being slight is all the rich perspective and detail.