Album Review: Halsey, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

Halsey is the most intriguing pop star of her generation – a maverick whose willingness to push boundaries and challenge convention set her apart from more squeaky-clean contemporaries. This is made clear with the cover art of her fourth album, in which she poses, like a character from Red Wedding-era Game of Thrones, in a medieval dress, chest exposed, baby on lap.

Her hunger to try something new extends to her choice of collaborators. If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power is produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is, of course, an elder statesman of bulldozer electronic rock. Put him and Halsey in a room together – and magic will surely spark?

The answer is “yes”, though the goth-pop wildfire does not blaze quite as brightly as anticipated. At its best, Halsey and Reznor are a match made in industrial crossover heaven. “I am not a Woman, I’m a God,” she declares on the single of the same name while a monster-truck groove rumbles in the background.

And there are echoes of the Reznor’s majestic piano dirge ‘Hurt’ – as immortalised by Johnny Cash – on opener ‘The Tradition’. But this is a collaboration, rather than merely a Reznor project with Halsey as vocalist/muse. And so the singer asserts on dominance on the twinkling ‘Bells in Santa Fe’, which feels like a carryover from the emotional turmoil of her wonderful previous LP, Manic (even as it echoes LCD Soundsystem’s ‘All My Friends’).

If the album lacks for something it is Manic’s ghostly understatement. This is a project that is all about bashing the listener over the head and occasionally clunking lyrics – such as when she compares herself to a locked and a loaded firearm on the otherwise compelling ‘Girl Is A Gun’ – don’t bring out the best in Halsey.

She is a unique talent. And Reznor an icon. And at moments If I Can’t Have Love lives up to its potential. Even when it doesn’t, it pulsates with a haunting, unfathomable beauty.

Key track: ‘Bells In Santa Fe’.

8/10.