There is something fitting about calling an album Pirouette when its creator has built a career on keeping listeners off balance. Across 16 tracks, 2hollis continues to blur the boundaries between electronic music, hyperpop, rap and experimental pop, but this time turns his attention towards something considerably more personal: love.
Following 2025’s star, Pirouette deepens 2hollis’s pop identity by shifting focus to raw emotional themes like love, jealousy, and heartbreak. Rather than a linear narrative, the album offers impressionistic vignettes of inner conflict. Musically, it embraces dynamic excess, blending club percussion, distorted guitars, glitches, and euphoric synths. Dense yet fluid, the tracks range from the expansive ‘Spring (Love Me)‘ and guitar-led ‘The Lady In Red‘ to the introspective ‘Pressure‘ and ‘Today‘.
The album excels when contrasting impulses collide. ‘Sophie‘ shifts from a sweet melody to distorted guitars and a theatrical chorus, ‘Sex‘ pairs provocative lyrics with buoyant electronics, and ‘Betrayal‘ features an expressive vocal performance. ‘Hurt‘ proves more divisive, combining industrial percussion and aggressive synths with a comparatively repetitive chorus. Throughout Pirouette, fluid transitions create a cohesive experience.
The album demonstrates clear ambition through continuous listening, live instrumentation, and layered electronic details, while artwork by Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano enhances its expansive world-building. However, Pirouette at times falters under this weight. Its 16-track length leaves some ideas half-formed with uneven emotional or sonic payoffs. Furthermore, despite more romantic songwriting, it stays close to the territory of star, using familiar production styles, explosive shifts, and genre collisions that refine rather than reinvent his formula.
Closer ‘Daisy‘ offers a fitting conclusion, blending bright pop sensibilities with complex digital textures. Beneath its euphoric sound lies an earnest reflection on relationships and maturity, offering emotional resolution without tidy answers. Ultimately, Pirouette is a compelling addition to 2hollis’s catalogue. While not a radical sonic departure, it showcases a more expressive artist balancing experimental electronic production with accessible pop songwriting.
Listen to Pirouette:
