As one half of the noise-pop duo Black Dresses, Ada Rook makes radioactive sleepover music that explores the fear, anger, and trauma spawned by a hostile world. On solo records like 2016’s Void Fantasy and 2020’s 2,020 Knives, she crafted industrial nightmares and dissociative electro-lullabies with the bite of a brutal winter night, leaning into similarly dark themes. As of late, Rook’s perspective has grown more optimistic, a change you can see even in her song titles. Where she once gave her tracks names like “Tortured Bitch” and “Dream of the Weeks When the Void Held Me and All I Could Hear was the Howling of Wind,” she now offers a more hopeful reassurance: “Ur Gonna Live.”
Culled from unreleased cuts dating back to 2019, Rookie’s Bustle is her leanest and most uplifting release. The EP’s namesake is the Japanese point-and-click adventure game Cookie’s Bustle, about a young girl who believes she’s a teddy bear and confronts challenges ranging from terrorist threats to the eradication of humanity by aliens. (Rook is also a game developer.) Rookie’s Bustle maps a similarly arduous path toward trust and comfort. Opener “920London” lays out its arc in miniature, with a concept loosely inspired by a graphic novel about goth lovers nearing the apocalypse. Jangly guitar chords spread like rays of sunlight, only to be interrupted by a gnarled riff and anguished screams. Rook sings of “clouds in my head starting to break,” but her bleak imagery—car crashes, bad dreams, bloodshot eyes—creates a cataclysmic mood. At the last moment, the desolate noise fades and Rook cries out, “And you’re still here!” It sounds like a sigh of relief.
The skies are still dreary on the robo-thrasher “Ur Gonna Live,” but at least she’s not alone: “Everytime I look at you/I feel like I’ve become somebody new,” Rook sings. The pop-punk highlight “Curse (for Devi)” is an even more touching ode to companionship, with Rook pouring her heart out to her Black Dresses bandmate Devi McCallion. “You make me feel like I’m not sick,” she whispers with a tender ache, “like nothing ever happened to me.” The sweetness and confidence of these seven tracks lend the EP a unique position within Rook’s discography. By the time we get to happy hardcore closer “A Future,” peace seems finally within reach.
The upbeat arc of the lyrics parallels the increasing buoyancy of Rook’s sonic palette. Much of her prior work sounded like a rave inside a cement mixer; Rookie’s Bustle, by comparison, is closer to a metalcore riff on the Jet Set Radio Future soundtrack. Where she once wielded clanging metallic percussion and bursts of harsh noise, she now deploys breakbeats that showcase her gift for peppy, danceable pop production. Her snarling screams now resolve into satisfying melodic hooks, as on the scratchy crunkcore of “STARLIGHT ZONE.” Even when that old, familiar darkness creeps into her music, the glimmer still remains, brighter than ever.
