Kacy Hill’s Bug is Garden-Grown Indie-Pop

Kacy Hill’s fourth album Bug is humble and organic, as she was inspired by the soil and toil of working in her house’s garden. The resulting project coils like vines and sifts like leaves in the wind, and Bug is primed to soundtrack candlelit nights in and springtime picnics. But Hill’s featherlight vocals and gentle arrangements are misleading: Even though the album sets a restorative mood, it paces with the anxiety of keeping still. Bug is preoccupied with the insecurities of things staying the same.

The album begins with “No One” and sets the scene immediately with Hill’s opening line: “I’ll be in the garden.” The song is coffeehouse folk, full of acoustic guitars and low, patient drums, and Hill summarizes the doubts that permeate the ensuing ten tracks: “And I’ve got more than I wanted / Will it ever be enough?” On her last album, 2021’s Simple, Sweet, and Smiling, Hill sings, mirrored by a pitched-up autotune, “Wanna be your sunlight / I wanna be your good side / I couldn’t wait” on the opener “I Couldn’t Wait.” She sounded reserved and delicate then, even as her words were resolute. Here, the opposite is true. On “No One”’s final chorus, her doubts challenge her each time she tries to reassure herself: “I’d like to stay / Will it ever be enough / Just this way / There’s always someone better.” Despite all of this self-assuaging, Hill is tranquil. She’s used to this kind of self-interrogation; this isn’t an anomaly—just an average day working in the garden.

Bug returns to these doubts over and over again. “Damn” addresses a man who can’t live up to the expectations he’s set for himself: “Damn, I wish you’d wanna / Be the man I thought that you were gonna.” Hill is unimpressed. The song’s Rostam-esque guitars build her frustration more than her vocals, until she finally lets out a high note in the bridge. Even though she’s disappointed in the man, her doubts inevitably return to herself: “You can’t think too far ahead / But that’s all I do, is that so bad?” On the HAIM-like “You Know I Love You Still,” Hill grapples with her goals in the music industry. There’s more questioning and more self-reassurance: “But just for now / Can I silence intuition?” It’s one of the few songs on Bug that reaches a conclusion—she overcomes all that self-doubt and still makes songs: “Give it one more try ‘cause / The heartbreak’s half the thrill.” Both songs are pastel and breezy, they don’t complicate or elaborate on Hill’s songwriting. Instead, they’re focused on setting the tone.

The album is at its best when it brings its discomfort to the surface. “My Day Off,” a duet with Marcus Brown—who records under the alias Nourished by Time—shakes off the sunlit lull of “Frog Rinse” with a spindly bass riff and meatier piano chords. Jim-E-Stack’s production is full of wiry guitars and subtle bass-synths. It’s both nostalgic and uneasy. When Hill returns to the same themes—her simultaneous comfort and claustrophobia in a relationship—they sound denser and knottier across this tangled production. Hill’s lilt foils against Brown’s baritone, as they sing the best hook on the album: “I can’t keep loving you more than me.”

“Here I Am” features production from Sega Bodega, the London-based producer best known for his work with Shygirl, EARTHEATER and FKA twigs. He splices up Hill’s voice, hollows it out till you hear all the air passing through, and compresses it into its own snaking, slithering synth pattern. With its atmospherics and hazy club beats, “Here I Am” brings some melodrama to break up the malaise of Bug. It’s a twist of color and texture amidst the album’s no-frills, folksy pop.

“Honey Boba Boy” gets the closest to disrupting Bug’s content. Backdropped by an acoustic guitar and synths that flicker and chirp like cicadas in the summertime, Hill confesses “there’s always someone keeping me alive” and, later, that “no one’s ever done it so right.” It’s the one place on Bug where her voice comes close to a crack. She’s pushing the limits of her tranquility into something more uncertain, and ultimately more interesting. The album needs more moments where the golden hour sunlight and summery nostalgia betray their placidity and we get something that’s tender and unresolved. Hill has spent all this time ruminating in her garden, asking questions and reassuring herself. Bug lets us in on these ruminations, but nothing more.

Andy Steiner is a writer and musician. When he’s not reviewing albums, you can find him collecting ‘80s Rush merchandise. Follow him on Instagram or Twitter.