‘Hideous Bastard’ Review: Feeling Monstrous in One’s Skin

metroweekly.com:

 Hideous Bastard (★★★☆☆) features the letters of the album title sticking out of Sim’s grinning face.A devout horror fan who also collaborated on a three-part horror short, Sim leans into his preoccupation with ugliness and monstrosity, and the gruesome image neatly echoes Hideous Bastard‘s deliberate, artful lack of subtlety.From its opening lines, it’s clear Hideous Bastard is a deeply personal work for Sim, which may go some way towards explaining why his foray into solo work has come so long after his xx bandmates Romy Mady Croft and Jamie xx began pursuing their own projects.“Been living with HIV since 17,” he bluntly intones at the end of his album opener and lead single “Hideous,” immediately following the revelation by asking “Am I hideous?” Disclosing his HIV status while also openly reckoning with the attendant shame that has accompanied it throughout his adult life is a devastating one-two punch.While Sim never quite manages to recapture the brilliance and emotional heft of his opener, he remains focused on the intertwined feelings of fear and shame, and the way they weave themselves into our relationships and affect our expectations of the world and ourselves.He comes close to matching the stark, introspective honesty of the title track in his musings on the relationship between shame and queer love on “Fruit,” and in his admission in “Sensitive Child” of the fragility that holds him back from relationships.

For listeners used to the icy aloofness of the xx, hearing Sim open up with such frankness might be jarring.Even as he opens up about some uncomfortably personal things, however, Sim is still aware of the safety offered by masking one’s inner turmoil, and seems unsure about exactly how much he can, or.