Review

By Cal Nicholson | 27/04/2026

Sometimes music isn’t something you can simply put your feet up to and listen with a passive ear. In the case of Lucy Liyou’s ‘MR COBRA’, you would be naive to enter with that assumption. A porous and unstable hybrid of noise, theatrics, and memory, you are dragged through its 53-minute runtime, eyes widened and mouth agape. These tracks unfold with a confrontational conviction, never sitting in one place for too long. Adapted into a semi-autobiographical performance piece, ‘MR COBRA’ traces a fraught relationship with a predator through the fragmented eyes of its central character, Babygirl (also the title of the album's lead single). Desire and shame sit at this album's core, constantly circling one another and never truly resolving. What emerges is something horrific and hauntingly singular. Sonically, ‘MR COBRA’ operates as a mutating collage. Free-jazz piano segments splinter and twinkle, ambient textures dissolve into sudden bursts of noise, and fragments of disco and pop flicker briefly before being swallowed back into the void. Field recordings, text-to-speech, and samples - including an unexpected interpolation of Taylor Swift’s ‘Love Story’ and eerie echoes of the 1968 horror film Rosemary’s Baby - are stitched together with little concern for cohesion in any traditional sense. The result feels closer to a fractured opera than anything resembling conventional songcraft. Melody, when it appears, feels almost deceptive. ‘Constrictor (Haha)’ provides a momentary illusion of stability in its disco-tinged opening, but quickly derails into harsh noise and chirpy elevator music. This constant unpredictability becomes the album’s language: sounds emerge, contort, and vanish before they can fully settle, mirroring the emotional volatility at its centre. That volatility is where ‘MR COBRA’ cuts the deepest. Liyou’s interrogation of trans identity grounds these abominations of sound in something painfully human. The body acts as a site of performance - staged, scrutinised, and at times willingly objectified. Identity is both constructed and consumed in real time, caught between agency and spectacle. It’s unsettling, but deliberately so. By the time we reach the final stretch in ‘Finale (Transition)!’, the album offers no easy resolution. Relentless beats undercut whispers of ‘coward’, interrupted by clicks, pops, and gunshots, before dissipating into a surprisingly serene instrumental outro. It lingers in the air, leaving behind a residue of relief rather than a clear-cut conclusion. Liyou doesn’t just blur the line between music and performance - she quietly dismantles it entirely, suggesting that some experiences aren’t meant to be neatly contained at all.