Moriah Pereira, AKA Poppy, emerged in 2014 as a YouTube sensation, pitched as a fictional character: a video of her eating candy floss garnered over two million views. When she started releasing albums on Diplo’s label, it was impossible to separate her performance art from her bubblegum pop. But as Poppy’s fictional world expanded, Pereira became embroiled in IRL controversy. She and character co-creator Titanic Sinclair were sued for plagiarism by Sinclair’s former partner. Poppy defended Sinclair, until 2019, when she accused him of “manipulative patterns” and they parted ways.

On her new LP, Poppy is heavy with industry baggage, but liberated, too: she has a new label and is operating without her former collaborator. I Disagree opens with Concrete and the sinister whisper “bury me six feet deep”: her lyrics circle themes of death, rebirth, vengeance and freedom.

To underscore her personal transformation, she’s embraced a nu-metal reinvention.

Of course, this is Poppy, and so repetitive, Twitter bot-like lyrics remain the norm (“Chewy chewy / Yummy yummy yummy”, goes one refrain). But there are moments of musical complexity and bracing sincerity that her previous albums have lacked: Anything Like Me channels restrained rage in the vein of Billie Eilish; the title track flits convincingly between whispers and screams, while Fill the Crown, propelled by a bass line indebted to Robyn’s Dancing on My Own, offers brilliantly ridiculous gothy growls. She ends the album by singing angelically, “You can be anyone you want to be”: having broken free of a rigid persona, Poppy’s reboot is surprisingly compelling.