Three years after her last album, Slayyyter returns with “WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA,” the punchy, riotous explosion of an unabashedly unrestrained spirit.

At once tapping into a clear, danceable electro-pop sensibility and an edgy grittiness reminiscent of a smoke-filled back alley, the 42-minute long project teeters on the knife’s edge between gaudiness and sheer guilty pleasure.

Spanning broadly across genres, Slayyyter pulls the listener into the sonic experience of a wild night out. She knows she’s cool, and that self-assuredness comes through in every track, whether she is singing over electronic instrumentation that could have been pulled straight out of the 2000’s on “BEAT UP CHANEL$” or letting a dark synth akin to an early Justice track take over the soundscape at the end of “YES GODDD.”

The listener is in for a night of debauchery, and it is electrifying. The party-girl ethos cultivated in the album’s early moments, particularly on the subtly priming “DANCE…” builds and builds, bolstered by the standouts “OLD TECHNOLOGY” and “CRANK.” Yet there are moments that distance themselves from the rest of the album, slowing the tempo and peeling back the curtain to uncover moments of intimate self-reflection.

“GAS STATION,” specifically, recounts Slayyyter feeling scorned by a former lover due to her energetic, prideful nature, something the artist appears to still be grappling with. These moments of relative slowness only reinforce Slayyyter’s decision to dive back into the fray, to further embody the chaos and excitement of the party she had just taken us away from.

This stated contrast plays out sonically, as well as thematically, as the quieter tracks such as “UNKNOWN LOVERZ” pull more heavily from classic pop-sounds, with glossy production and clean vocals. In being surrounded by such a vastly different sound — where heavy guitar riffs on “$T. LOSER,” for example, seem natural, if not the norm — the listener gets the sensation of release from the otherwise sweaty darkness of a club, like a brief palette cleanser.

It follows neatly that the album’s second to last track is a prayer to look beyond herself and to “seek to comfort, rather than be comforted.” Slayyyter’s about-face reads like a moment of clarity in the wake of her night of indulgence.

The album feels like a mix of Charli xcx and early Gwen Stefani — playful and vibrant, all the while light on its feet and fluid. Its only downside might be the songs in which it overplays its hand and lets itself feel one-note. Tracks like “I’M ACTUALLY KINDA FAMOUS” overdo their central hook, and end up feeling more repetitive than exciting. This repetition plays out in much of the writing across the project, too, where ideas feel underexplored or just too simplistic, with thematic progression stalling without any ongoing momentum.

The album, despite consisting primarily of tracks just shy of the three-minute mark, has moments where it feels like it drags, either because of a repetitive song or because it slows down just a touch too much, something that happens with the track “OLD FLING$.”

Still, the unrelenting pace and energy of the album’s best tracks makes up for these slightly less successful moments, with enough exciting instrumentation and slick songwriting to make up for any comparatively dull breaks. Additionally, with the shorter tracks, even if the listener feels that they are not enjoying one song, another is right around the corner. The sometimes subtle variety in approach to each moment on the album, makes it so there is always something new to experience.

“WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA” is a sexy, fun adventure that does not take much effort to immerse oneself in. With enough popular appeal to soften the edge of its most potentially abrasive sonic choices, and consistently exciting production decisions differentiating it from the general landscape of mass-produced pop, Slayyyter crafts a neatly balanced 14 tracks, albeit with a few flaws.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.