Psi

Psi (stylized as Ψ) is the seventh studio album by British musician Romo. It was surprise released on August 18, 2021, just five days after its lead single "Psi (Before The End)". It is Romo's second album released in 2021 and third album in an 11-month timeframe that began with her surprise released comeback Romo (II). It is also the final album released in Romo's lifetime; she died three months after its release.

At eight songs, Psi has the most songs of Romo's 2020s output, continuing the progressive rock-influenced experimental electropop direction she began during the Romo (II) era but with an emphasis on confessional lyrics, most of which were inspired by her personal life, as well as a multitude of transgressive fiction writings. Romo wrote the album's lyrics over a two-week period while writing another album intended to serve as a third part continuing the cycle of art rock albums following Romo (II) and Tambora and, after becoming motivated by how her deeply personal songwriting was taking shape, opted to release Psi before the other album, which she tentatively titled Tundra.

The album's title, also the name of the album's opening track and lead single, is derived from the penultimate letter in the Greek alphabet, before omega. Romo described Psi as a loose concept album about the fear, uncertainty and life pressures that come from anticipating the end of the world or the end of Western democracy. The lyrics on Psi incorporate themes of political, social and familial anxieties, sex and mortality. Psi polarized music critics and industry peers upon its release, mostly for the sexually explicit and shock content of the songs "Flesh Caverns", "Bundy Chic" and "Gag". Because of the divisive response, combined with it being overshadowed by the blockbuster chart performance of Alesha's album Monika, Psi garnered Romo's lowest first week album sales since POPSTAR: The Life & Times Of Belle Ball in 2009.

Background
Despite the initial blockbuster success of her previous album Tambora, its lead single "No One Ever Gets What They Want" underperformed on the singles chart. Angered by her management's chart-chasing attitude, Romo retreated from the spotlight and began writing new songs for a number of potential projects, inspired by her career shortcomings, on again-off again mental health struggles, and continued existential threats to Western democracy. But while in the middle of writing an album she tentatively titled Tundra that she intended to be a third and final record in an art rock trilogy that started with Romo (II) and continued with Tambora, Romo began studying transgressive fiction such as the works of Chuck Palahniuk and confessional writing like the poetry of Sylvia Plath. As she was writing songs inspired by what she was reading, she decided many of these new songs should be separate from Tundra. Inspired by the raw anger of following her management's expectations of chart stardom but not achieving the heights she did in her 2008-11 glory days, Romo decided to defy musical conventions by going further out of the mainstream than she did previously, with louder and noisier compositions eschewing pop influence.

Songs
The first song written for the album was "Exhuming The Hatchet", whose title is lifted from the idiom "bury the hatchet," which means making peace following a disagreement. The title and the song's lyrics discuss the resurrection of disagreements thought to be resolved. "The Day The Sun Shines Brighter", about the lowest of Romo's feelings of negative self worth, followed soon after.

"Psi (Before The End)" is the album's lead single and opening track. It summarizes the album's overall theme of anxiety over the end being worse than the end, and was heavily influenced by the poetry of Sylvia Plath, including a reference to a line from her poem "Lesbos" and featuring an outro inspired by her work.

"Flesh Caverns" is a multi part epic that tells a story about two couples with interconnecting sexual experiences. "Flesh Caverns" samples "Mushroom" by the German experimental rock band Can; the meaning of the lyrics diverges from the source material, as "mushroom head" in the original song referred to the mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb, but on "Flesh Caverns" it refers to the glans of the penis. The second verse includes the line "I wanted a hit, so baby I gotta show my tits," which interpolates LCD Soundsystem's "You Wanted A Hit" and references Romo's own "TITS-FM!" The song also references Pet Sounds, the 1966 album by the Beach Boys widely considered one of the most important albums in popular music history.

"Cunt Waltz" was written about Romo's negative experiences with past romantic partners and mental health challenges and likens music to motherhood, saying recording songs is the closest she will get to having children. "Cunt Waltz", which follows the Can-sampling "Flesh Caverns", references Can's "Halleluhwah" - specifically the part that references the three preceding songs on Tago Mago - by referencing the titles of Psi's first three songs: "Before the end we exhumed the hatchet on the day the sun shines brighter." Can's members said they lifted the practice from James Brown. It also references the Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters in the line "Rampant intellectualism is my coping mechanism."

"Bundy Chic", whose title refers to serial killer Ted Bundy, is an attempt at a transgressive fiction-inspired story song about a serial killer inspired by Ted Bundy who becomes a media spectacle because of his clean cut, attractive appearance. Romo intended for the song to serve as a warning to the media to avoid glamorizing murderers.

The sprawling epic "Fifteen For Eternity" relates Romo's personal mental health issues in adulthood to her adolescent challenges, interspersing those thoughts with her feelings on herself as she wakes up in the morning and tries to get ready for the workday, and her thoughts on whether she would have been forced to endure electroconvulsion therapy or a lobotomy for her struggles if she were alive during her grandparents' day. The lyrics are filled with art and pop culture references, including the Roman legend of the Cumean Sibyl, the historic Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights where Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos went to space, The Simpsons episode "Lisa Vs. Malibu Stacy", the Ramones' "Teenage Lobotomy", the Biblical passage "the meek shall inherit the Earth", the Hieronymus Bosch triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, Rush's "Subdivisions" and Romo's own song "The Castration Of Rock & Roll".

On the closing song "Gag", Romo tells a story with a double meaning in which a narrator is either performing fellatio or has the base of a gun in their mouth.

Psi is Romo's first album since her debut album Eve (2008) that is written, produced and performed entirely by Romo.

Art references
Psi is notable for bearing significant influence from both literary and visual arts. Romo references Marcel Duchamp's Fountain sculpture in "Psi (Before The End)", Jackson Pollock's drip paintings in "Bundy Chic" and the Hieronymus Bosch triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights in "Fifteen For Eternity".

Some of the literary works Romo references throughout the album include Sylvia Plath's Ariel, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters, Choke and Haunted, Charles Bukowski's Factotum, Allen Ginsberg's poems Howl and America, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love and Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days Of Sodom.

Critical
Psi polarized critics upon its release. Some music publications considered it one of Romo's best works and one of the greatest of her career and of 2021, while others gave mixed to negative reviews for relying too heavily on the influence of transgressive literature in such a way that it either relied too heavily on shock value or came across as resembling other musicians' works, namely pop punk and emo music of the 2000s.

Many reviewers were critical of the extremely explicit content in "Flesh Caverns" in the expositions used to describe two couples who go behind each other's backs to engage in same-sex encounters with each other; "Bundy Chic", which opens with the scene of a college-aged murderer raping the corpse of one of his victims; and closing track "Gag" in its descriptions of what is implied to be either oral sex or suicide by gun.

In contrast, opening track and lead single "Psi (Before The End)" and penultimate track "Fifteen For Eternity" both received universal critical acclaim. After the album's release, "Psi" was noted for its prescient tone for the times, given how the single was commercially released just days before the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, a moment that in itself could be a moment where the the agonizing over what could happen next could be, as Romo says, worse than before the end. Most reviewers commended "Fifteen For Eternity" for its experimental production, the poetic lyrical structure and the lyrics' brutally honest discussions of mental illness, high school and corporate labor expectations.

"Cunt Waltz" also received critical acclaim for its poetic lyrics, though some critics felt the inclusion of the word "cunt" in the title was not necessary.

Commercial
Psi debuted at #2 on the Urapopstar Top 40 Albums Chart with sales of 90,421 copies, vastly outsold by Alesha's Monika in its second week of release. Psi underperformed compared to Romo's two previous albums in their first weeks, earning her lowest first-week sales since POPSTAR: The Life & Times Of Bell Ball, which debuted with 82,273 copies sold.

So far, Psi has sold 321,214 copies.

Track listing
All songs written and produced by Jenna Romo.

1. "Psi (Before The End)" 2. "Exhuming The Hatchet" 3. "The Day The Sun Shines Brighter" 4. "Flesh Caverns" 5. "Cunt Waltz" 6. "Bundy Chic" 7. "Fifteen For Eternity" 8. "Gag"

Credits
 * "Flesh Caverns" contains a sample of "Mushroom" by Can and an interpolation of "You Wanted A Hit" by LCD Soundsystem.
 * "Fifteen For Eternity" contains interpolations of "Teenage Lobotomy" by the Ramones and "Subdivisions" by Rush.