Erika de Casier: Sensational review – R&B rewind from a true original

(4AD)
Full of 90s and 00s nostalgia, from Destiny’s Child to Café del Mar, the Danish artist’s second album boasts witty lyrics, outlandish soundscapes and beautiful pop melodies

They sound almost nothing like each other, but the second album by Erika de Casier – that rarest of musical phenomena, an R&B artist from Ribe, a small town in southern Denmark – feels like a spiritual counterpart of another recent acclaimed album. Like Rina Sawayama’s 2020 debut, Sensational has its roots in childhood hours spent watching early-00s MTV. But while Sawayama reflected the channel’s scattershot bombardment – a world where nu-metal, Britney Spears, hip-hop and Evanescence all jostled for your attention – Sensational is more intensively focused.