“Dialectical,” “epistemological,” "ontological" – stand aside. A new adjective is being ushered into the critical lexicon: “horny.” The usher is Amanda Petrusich – first in her wonderful “Troye Sivan’s Songs of Desire” (“But then there is the video for ‘Rush,’ the first single from the Australian pop star Troye Sivan’s third LP, ‘Something to Give Each Other’—it is, as they say, horny on main”) – and now, in her superb “Age of Anxiety,” in this week’s issue, where she says of Billie Eilish’s song “Lunch,”
“Lunch” is a weird, pulsing track, vigorous and horny. It’s also my favorite song on the new album, in part because Eilish sounds incredibly free, which is to say, she sounds like herself.
Petrusich seems incredibly free, too. Her unselfconscious celebration of sexual pleasure is bracing. Her writing enacts the condition it extols. It’s vigorous and horny.
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