Music Review: Robyn's 'Sexistential' is in a pop class all its own

Audio By Carbonatix

NEW YORK (AP) — She first performed the title track, “Sexistential,” on Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ — alone, in leather and heels — a rap atop minimal house production about having one-night stands in your 40s, 10 weeks into in vitro fertilization-aided pregnancy. It was sexy, and funny, and kitschy, and polarizing. It was everything that is Robyn.

On Friday, the Swedish cult popstar will release her first new album in eight years. “Sexistential,” a clear portmanteau of “sex” and “existential” — no crises here, but the clarity that comes after. It is nine-tracks of shimmering synths (“Dopamine,” “Really Real”) ascendant choruses (“Into the Sun”) and rebellious pop songs that double as emotional life rafts (“Sucker for Love”).

According to the album's press materials, this, her ninth album, arrives at the end of a long-term relationship. Heartbreak emerges only in true Robyn fascination — via elated electronic programming — even in its most subtle moment. And that track, “Light Up,” is imbued with playful laser sounds and intergalactic charm. In whole, “Sexistential” is a bright collection of sensual tunes about freedom, single motherhood, love and lust — often in the same breath.

For “Sexistential,” Robyn reenlisted longtime collaborator Klas Åhlund. She also worked with the pop mastermind Max Martin, their first collaboration since 2010's “Time Machine,” on the phone-sex anthem “Talk To Me” and the album's retro-futuristic closer “Into the Sun.” Both amplify her well-established skillsets.

There are a few revisitations, too: A vaporwave version of her 2002 track “Blow My Mind” from “Don't Stop the Music,” and “Sucker for Love,” a fists-up defense of romance originally co-written with Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp for their 2014 joint EP, “Do It Again.” They don't feel dated, perhaps the effortless effect of Robyn's position as a prescient pop force; she is a clear progenitor for the modern star (Charli xcx, anyone?)

Or maybe there's a simpler explanation, as Robyn puts it in “Blow My Mind”: “And hey, here’s the part,” she sings. “I’m still having fun.”

For the casual listener, Robyn is best-known as the force behind 2010's “Dancing on My Own,” a seismic electropop song both of its time and one that easily eclipses it, a dance floor classic written from the perspective of a self-destructive protagonist out at the club to catch their ex with another woman. It sounds euphoric. It's absolutely lonely. And exhilarating.

It's a good thing that music echoes here. There's no “Dancing on My Own” in this collection — how could there be, perfection doesn't come that often — but there is propulsion. For now, the sad disco has been shifted slightly to the side to make room for a different kind of libido. And as Robyn makes it clear here: It's cool to be concupiscent.

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“Sexistential” by Robyn

Four stars out of five.

On repeat: “Dopamine,” “Sexistential”

Skip it: “It Don't Mean A Thing”

For fans of: Charli xcx (sorry), latex, revelation by strobe light