On Tuesday, October 8th, beloved Denver-based DJ and producer Maddy O’Neal dropped her third full-length album, Vital Signs. The world needs music like this these days. Things feel heavy for many, life and the prospect of the passage of time looming overhead and darkening the horizon. A person, especially a young one, navigating this world needs to be prepared, needs tools and ideas to protect themselves from entropy. Maddy O’Neal’s Vital Signs is such a tool. As indicated by its name, it’s an album that feels so powerfully, unabashedly alive, so much so that that creeping darkness that looms over the world today dares not show itself in the face of such living. It’s the kind of work that you carry with you like a warm memory that you draw on when faced with uncertainty, that reminds you of where you started and just how far you’ve come. The album is truly a celebration of evolution, a kaleidoscopic exploration of the idea of the journey itself. It doesn’t feel like the final destination either, but yet another incredible milestone on the journey O’Neal finds herself on. She’s come a long way, but it also feels like she’s just getting started. Oh and, also, the album fucking bangs.
“Alive,” fittingly the first track on the album, really sets the tone right off the bat. It opens with a sample that speaks about evolution as inherent to being alive. The sample passes quickly, giving way to faint drums rolling in fast, like a coming summer storm, blasts of synth accompanying like distant thunder. Soon, it all culminates and the storm comes. The drop feels huge and immediately cathartic. This speaks to O’Neal’s confidence and caliber as a producer. Many artists wait for that cathartic moment, preferring to use an entire album to get there. Instead, O’Neal hits the listener right off the bat with this feeling of pure radiance, a goal long strived for finally attained. O’Neal then carries over this cathartic feeling throughout the rest of the album, allowing the catharsis itself to stretch through to the album’s final moments. As a result, each track emanates a sense of joy, confidence and peace.
It should also be said that though this sense of general catharsis pervades the entire album, each song is a finely crafted exercise in tension and release, each build and drop hitting hard and keeping the listener on their toes. Just because a sense of peace is established right off the bat does not make the rest of the album stagnant.
The song ends with clapping that carries over into the next song, “Make You Feel.” The transition is seamless, further speaking to O’Neal’s sense of purpose when putting Vital Signs together and displaying her intention and mind for structure. The song is huge, dipping into some old-school dubstep-sounding wubs that remind one of those early days of the genre and the “holy shit, what is this?” aspect that accompanied it when it first was becoming popular. This once again feels intentional. The album itself, in addition to celebrating personal growth, also feels like a celebration of electronic dance music as a whole, a love letter to the genre that has changed O’Neal’s life and the lives of so many more. Putting this old-school feeling track so early on the album reflects that idea, especially since the rest of Vital Signs touches on so many different iterations of the genre.
The album then moves into “Locked In,” which showcases its first feature: beloved rapper and longtime Griz collaborator ProbCause. The song is earth-shattering, beginning with a rather funky beat coupled with ProbCause flowing over and ending as this chest-rattling, headbanging earthquake that feels again like pure confidence, like O’Neal’s very steps as an artist have the potential to shake the earth itself.
Next is “I Wanna Know,” featuring Xenotype, which begins as a lower-key, trappy song that combines a deep sense of yearning and curiosity with a swirling synth-forward line that wraps itself around the brain. A bit before the halfway mark, however, the song transforms into another huge trap-leaning banger sure to impair a few necks whenever O’Neal plays it live. It should also be noted that the song continues O’Neal’s exploration of the EDM genre as a whole as she explores more trap-inspired inclinations.
This continues further with “Lost,” which features Cherub, who is nice to hear from after what feels like some time. This one delves into the deep house, the track feeling like dancing with someone new and beautiful for the first time in a dark club, sweat and breath swirling together under the pulsating light, the night alive with possibility. Never afraid to get sexy, Cherub really drives this feeling home as they breathe and vocalize over the rolling track.
This is followed by “Stand Up,” one of this writer’s favorite tracks on the album. It’s the first song in a few with no features, just O’Neal herself. While many of the songs that have come before felt quite structured, this one feels different, freer, individual. Its placement right after the album’s halfway point is perfect. It’s like O’Neal is standing up into her own potential, realizing all the talent and power she holds within herself and just letting herself be free, letting herself loose upon the music. This doesn’t mean the song is a mess or without structure. It feels refreshingly confident and goes to some rather insane places.
If you’ve been following O’Neal at all recently, chances are very high that you’ve already heard “Run It Back,” the next song on the album. It features Jason Leech and the legendary DJ Paul from Three 6 Mafia and sounds like an old-school southern banger accentuated with modernized production. Since this writer grew up just a few hours away from Memphis, this writer smiled through every second of the song, especially when DJ Paul says, “We stay lit like a stove at the Waffle House.” If you know, you know. This writer’s personal joy aside, it speaks volumes to O’Neal’s career ascension that a legend like DJ Paul is signing up to work with her.
O’Neal appears alone again with “Too Real,” a song that feels like the closest thing to gospel that electronic music can achieve. She uses these beautiful vocalizations, conducting them into a symphony before breaking them apart and turning them into a part of the beat itself. It’s also impossibly funky, the kind of song that furrows the bron and raises one side of the mouth, inducing a stank face for ages.
The album’s penultimate track, “Wicked Games,” featuring Lhasa Phetik, is this writer’s favorite on the album. It encapsulates all the feelings that pervade all of Vital Signs while adhering to this idea of truth in that evolution is beautiful and is what keeps us alive but can also be exhausting. Nevertheless, in the face of hardship and exhaustion, that darkness on the horizon, we, humanity, persist, keep moving forward and growing, and keep playing the game. The song actually uses a sample that just says “living” in the verse following the first drop, driving the theme home. While there is a sense of melancholy to the song, it ends with one last huge verse, one final catharsis and the listener can hear O’Neal pour her heart and her journey and the lessons that have come into those last minutes of the song. It’s a powerful climax for the album, one that sends your very soul out into the ether smiling.
Finally, the album ends with the soft, contemplative “Fresh Air.” The song is peace, rest along the way, a quick stop to fill the lungs and set the sights on whatever comes next. For O’Neal, there can only be more beauty on the horizon as her career continues to grow. For the rest of us, may we all be reminded that there is no destination, only the journey and the lives we lead along the way.
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