Maggie Rogers, Surrender review — impassioned vocals and intoxicating desires

Maggie Rogers got her break in 2016 as a music student at New York University when Pharrell Williams heard a song she had written called “Alaska” during a masterclass that he was giving. The video showing him listening to it while sitting next to her went viral. She tries not to cast nervous side glances at him. He looks surprised, then delighted. At the end, he tells her he has no advice for her: the song is unimprovable.

“Alaska” is a slinky electronic pop number about personal transformation in which Rogers sings about walking off “an old me” during a wintry hike. It presaged a chrysalis-like change in her own circumstances. Buoyed by Williams’s praise and the viral video of her discovery, she released a successful debut album in 2019, Heard It in a Past Life. Now comes a follow-up, Surrender. Once again, themes of metamorphosis are prominent.

There are two types of surrender in its songs. Starting with “Overdrive”, in which Rogers describes going “weak at the knees”, the scenarios are about overwhelming urges and emotions. “Can’t hide what you desire once you’re on it,” she sings in “Want Want”. The impulse to submit to these intoxicating forces has been sharpened by the pandemic. She began writing the album while quarantined with her parents in Maine in 2020. Surrender is about awakening from dormancy and plunging back into life.

Rogers’s vocals have an urgent, impassioned edge. “I don’t care if it nearly kills me,” she sings in “Shatter”, which is about flinging oneself into reckless city adventures with a lover. A distorted guitar conveys instability, but the song’s structure is more controlled. Like the other tracks, it follows a carefully plotted course, pressing buttons with earworm hooks and big choruses. This is the other type of surrender in the album — to the emotional manipulations of mainstream pop music.

“Horses” is a by-the-numbers ballad whose formulaic machinations go against lyrical sentiments of wanting to run wild. But “That’s Where I Am” neatly marries catchy pop with a theme of self-abandonment to a loved one. Like the tune, it’s about a person you can’t get out of your head.

★★★☆☆

‘Surrender’ is released by Polydor Records