The artistic unravelling of a story of unthinkable heartbreak and devastation. Indie veterans will know the Bad Bubble musical legacy already, but for those new to his journey, this release marks Album Seven of an extensive ode to the life of a child taken from the world before their first breath.
Bad Bubble’s legacy is made up of an eight-part story, the details of which were initially written on cards, with each card then becoming an album. The result was eight completed albums, eight accompanying EPs, and a few singles from each to help build up intrigue.
A Well Devised Plan is album seven, a collection comprised of 12 original tracks, with multiple threads of familiarity to the depth of this experience and its impact, and with a closing track directly linking to previous songs on the topic (The Eggs Pt.4).
We begin with Toska Knell, a title mysterious as ever, and a string and synth combination that offers an instrumental mood to immerse listeners and prepare them for the stories ahead. The instrumental introductions are one of many key traits unmistakable as Bad Bubble. In this case, the mellow energy rises to evocative, the organic and electronic aspects intertwine beautifully, and there’s an immediate sense of weight and vastness alike to the incoming venture.
Beauty Burger follows, an ethereal echo-chamber of eighties synths and quietly desperate vocals – lyrics reflecting on loss, loneliness, and the struggle to find a conscience again after heavy turmoil. The sound is deeply moving, melancholic, and softly heartbroken, and moves well towards the rise and fall synth pattern of a slightly brighter Balls. The music is contrasted by the sheer vocal passion, and indeed by these aching lyrics – “I’d crawl myself half way across the goddamn world to see those eyes…”
For Iowa we enter piano delicacy and distant, uncertain vocal mystique again, another haunting ode to the ultimate goodbye, to the sadness of knowing there will be no return this time. Then suddenly the music intensifies, our producer moving back from acoustic freedom to programmed depth, rhythm, and weight, for the direct addressing and spiralling musicality of Doorknobbing.
Bad Bubble’s music is about the most distinct but also unpredictable of the independent realm of late. His songwriting often feels like an unlimited stream of consciousness, his lyrics and melodies merely freestyle thoughts emerging over a powerful soundscape. Always there’s a rise to something noteworthy though, a shift in the pattern, an adlib or declaration that closes the door on each outpouring. And all of this is central to the unique identity, musical fluidity, and heartfelt realism of the Bad Bubble project.
Overwear is musically bold, vocally the same in falsetto, a brief and complex poem of images and ideas, before We Will Never Grow Old Here dives into a cinematic eighties groove, and similar vocals that now call out to be healed and to rebuild that which sadly can’t be rebuilt.
Then there’s the piano intimacy and calm of In Pursuit of Something to Care About. A fearless and relatable topic these days, a vulnerable devotion that’s both musically familiar and vocally dissonant in its uncertainty and ache.
“Wakey wakey Baby, we got a brand new day, to fuck up in every possible way.”
Character is a defiant highlight – a strong melody, a sense of musical optimism, and an opening lyric that’s brilliantly powerful. Juxtaposition rings loud, and the opening line is a huge moment, followed by an emotionally loaded crescendo of reflections on what was lost.
After this, the intense pace, distortion and vocal grit of Small creates an unignorable explosion of pain and the unshakable feeling of tiredness about what has become. Contrast always matters, and Bad Bubble has arranged A Well Devised Plan in a way that consistently throws the listener back and forth between delicate wonder and unapologetically passionate desperation. Important is a key example of that shifting energy at the penultimate moment, and The Eggs Pt. 4 follows on gorgeously, to make for an enthralling and broken yet piercingly beautiful end to this journey.
“Too bad it ended this way… It’s just not enough.”
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