“THE S(EX) TAPES” Delivers On Its Promise

How do you get over a breakup?

If you’re a lesbian, you’ll probably make a piece of art with your ex. Artistic collaboration between queer women who’ve broken up is no rare phenomenon –– take the 2019 film “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” written and directed by Céline Sciamma and starring her longtime ex-lover Adèle Haenel, or the intimate music video for The Japanese House’s “Lilo”, featuring lead singer Amber Bain and her ex Marika Hackman. Hackman, herself a musician, said: “It was never nasty between me and Amber. We’re still best mates. We hang out a lot. It’s what lesbians do by the way.”

This rule holds true yet again in Cari Fletcher (better known as FLETCHER)’s latest album “THE S(EX) TAPES,” a glittering synthpop chronicle of a past but lingering relationship. All of the seven music videos were shot and directed by Shannon Beveridge, high-profile queer YouTuber and (you guessed it!) Fletcher’s ex.

“THE S(EX) TAPES” is a brash about-face from Fletcher’s previous album, “you ruined new york city for me,” a much softer sort of break-up pop. Here, those plucky electric guitars and faded synths get a glossy makeover. The message is clear –– this one is meant to be danced to.

In that sense the album certainly succeeds. Fletcher can write a hook as well as anyone in the business. Add in a few collaborations with high-profile songwriters, including the songwriting team behind Dua Lipa’s biggest hits and Jennifer Decilveo, who has written for everyone from Machine Gun Kelly to Ben Platt, and you have a sexy-pop-break-up sensation in the works.

The highlights: “Shh…Don’t Say It” and “If I Hated You” both epitomize the sad-yet-danceable genre in which Fletcher excels. The toned-down “Bitter,” co-written with Kito, is the angry ache of a blister rubbed raw. “I know you fucked her on the counter right before you cooked her dinner,” Fletcher sings, through her teeth. It’s a knockout line, even more so considering her subject is right there on the other side of the lens.

And that brings us to the music videos. Here’s where the vapid, surface-level reputation that defines today’s pop music catches up to Fletcher. Each of the videos brims with that trademark pop sex appeal which, although it’s less commodified for Fletcher than for, say, Justin Bieber or Ariana Grande, still rings with falsehood. Even while stumbling into the foamy grey sea in “Silence,” Fletcher maintains her perfect makeup, her too-cool model’s slouch, and her air of studied nonchalance. Many of the videos are nothing more than a Calvin Klein photoshoot, shuffling too quickly between generic pop shots of lips-eyes-skin with very little substance behind them. The videography is beautiful, but it’s so concerned with the physicality of intimacy that it forgets the emotion behind it.

There is one exception to that rule. Ironically, “Sex (With My Ex)” is the most explicitly narrative, and perhaps the most emotionally vulnerable, of the seven songs. The music video is a black-and-white compilation of shaky intimate shots, most of them handheld and casual, pulled from social media and an extensive camera roll. It’s the only time we really see Beveridge in front of the camera, and the effect is startling. The monologue becomes a conversation. There is a new kind of intimacy. For just a moment, we are privy to the golden days.

At the very end of the music video for “Sex (With My Ex),” we see Beveridge and Fletcher, together one last time. “Quarantine’s ending,” Fletcher says, her eyes drifting just below the frame. Then a quick cut and she’s looking right in the lens, her gaze sultry and sad. “Goodbye forever.” It’s a stripped-down moment, a sharp counterpoint to the staged glamour of the last six songs. If only it had lasted a little longer.