Mango Mango Mango – Cryptid Country Album Review
Cryptid Country by Mango Mango Mango is a cry for help. A hopeless, fearful representation of desperation and unhappiness. As a representation of what’s happening to the UK trans community, I reckon this is pretty accurate to what they were going for.
Listening through the album, I am struck by the feeling of being hunted for sport. Officially, the album is about being killed and eaten by a cryptid, with an underscore of the political, but if I am honest, the metaphor is clear, and if I wasn’t given the explanation, I would have reached for the trans experience before ever reaching for creature consumption. That doesn’t mean the listening experience isn’t visceral.
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The initial tracks bleed through each other. ‘Further and Further from Help’ and ‘Sick Dog’ both blend seamlessly in such a way that I wouldn’t notice the track had changed unless I was watching the playlist. They bring an ominous feeling, broken by the EDM-inspired panic of ‘Deadname’, which has me shimmying my shoulders as I look over them. It reminds me a little of Depeche Mode. We soon reach ‘Quelle Horreur’. Here, I do feel that something is chasing me through the woods, hunting and hungry, like the UK government, or perhaps Bigfoot, and that feeling lasts through ‘Starsong’, which feels like an instrumental continuation of ‘Quelle Horreur’.
When I listen to ‘Lowpink’, we see some of the moments of joy in their existence. It feels fragile and terrifying and beautiful. In an album like this, you really do need a moment of happiness, however fragile, to highlight the intensity of the rest of the album.
We leave off with ‘Idontwannathink’. It feels like a denial of everything we just went through. A desperate plea to forget. A desperate plea to not be made the way they are, but ultimately a failure to change. At the end of the day, we are who we are.
Photo by Rachel Smith @raesmithcreative
If I may give a small critique, I thought ‘My Enemy’ was weaker than the other songs. I would have left it off the tracklist and replaced it with ‘Recruit’, which I feel would work better in its place.
Cryptid Country is a roller coaster ride of dread, fear, paranoia, sadness, and underneath it all, a hint of the joy we are all fighting for. It isn’t a perfectly polished album, but it feels real and authentically lived. I am left feeling the album after it finishes. And I think that’s more important than perfection will ever be.
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Review written by Abigail Humphries
Abigail is a jack of all trades, master of none, but pretty good at art, writing, and comics.
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