‘Short n’ Sweet’ is Sabrina Carpenter’s sixth album – but it’s her spiritual sophomore, since 2022’s ’emails i can’t send’ catapulted her into the mainstream via a spiky love triangle that ultimately inspired the songs that launched both Carpenter’s rise and Olivia Rodrigo’s. ‘Espresso’, though, was the caffeine hit that led this album launch, the most distinctive song of the summer of recent years, and a manifestation statement from Carpenter. It’s true, everyone has basically been thinking about her every day since it came out. One might expect, then, more of the same from ‘Short n’ Sweet’: sultry, retro-tinged pop bops that assert Carpenter’s place as pop star, irresistible icon, reigning supreme over charts and admirers with infinite confidence. But no – ‘Short n’ Sweet’ veers towards the softer, more sincere side.
If you wanted to take a swing at putting together a timeline of ‘Short n’ Sweet’s songwriting, try and sort its tracklisting into categories and stages, you’d have to guess that ‘Espresso’ and its strutting allure sat either at the very beginning, or at the end. The rest of the record is less double-shot swagger and more fluttering, hearts-racing caffeine anxiety as Sabrina taps into more of the vulnerability that characterised eics. ‘Good Graces’ is a guard-up groove in which Carpenter describes how quickly she can ‘turn lovin’ into hatred’ if she’s wronged by a suitor – but her delicate delivery over an R&B-esque beat feels less assertive, more almost panicked and protective, ready to run away at the first sign of danger. ‘Slim Pickins’ and ‘Sharpest Tool’ continue the trend, a return-to-form for Sabrina with a gentle acoustic guitar on each, over which her lyrics lament the various ways in which men can be disappointing – indeed, on ‘Slim Pickins’, Carpenter just gives up: “guess I’ll end this life alone / I am not dramatic…”
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It’s fun listening despite its romantic nihilism, thanks to Carpenter’s deadpan lyricism – as we know from the “I beg you don’t embarrass me, motherfucker”s and the “that’s that me espresso”s we’ve heard so far, Carpenter is writing straight from the heart: no pretentiousness, no lofty aspirations, just precisely the silly, emotional, passionate thoughts that run through the head of a 25 year old woman in a situationship. As she says in ‘Dumb & Poetic’, she has no time for “highbrow manipulation”.. especially when she has sentiments she just needs to get out like ‘Juno’s “I’m so fuckin’ horny” in which Carpenter eloquently explains how she fancies someone so much she “might let you make me Juno”, on one of the record’s bigger bops too, going full coming-of-age with sparkly guitar riffs and grooves.
Carpenter mostly sticks to the blueprint – soft acoustic instrumentation for the more introspective outpourings, sexier soundtracking when she’s feeling sexier. ‘Espresso’ is joined in the latter category by ‘Juno’, and ‘Bed Chem’ which is a disco cut laden with barely-concealed innuendo, as well as opener ‘Taste’, in which Carpenter addresses the ex someone’s run back to. These silly, saucy moments work well because they feel so convincing set against the backdrop of the rest of the emotional undercurrents she doesn’t flinch away from. ‘Short n’ Sweet’ as a whole is a little less addictive than its lead single, and a little less sensitive than its predecessor, but it’s a solid entry into the Sabrina canon, with plenty of potential to sneak up on you with a gut-punch should you ever find yourself relating to it.
7/10
Words: Ims Taylor
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