Review: Oklou — choke enough

Oklou
choke enough
True Panther Records
Street: 02.07.25
Oklou = Grimes + Caroline Polachek + underscores

French experimental electro-pop artist Marylou Mayniel, aka Oklou, has dropped her official debut studio album choke enough. Off the heels of six singles, choke enough manages to take you on a light and rhythmic ride of soft percussion, bright horns and experimental electronic work. Despite having a feeling of being less “put together” than her previous release Galore, choke enough still manages to take the listener through a granulated, foggy electro-pop set that still ends up having catchy moments, just at a rate less than I wanted.

WIth nearly half the album released as singles to the project’s release, Choke Enough feels like it goes through an identity crisis that tries to confirm to both the audience and itself that it knows what it is. Relying on clear cut set pieces of the album from tracks such as “harvest sky” (featuring underscores) and my personal favorite track “blade bird,” the project also falls back easily to repetitive arpeggiated synth lines that can slowly become a headache. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot to enjoy on their album, there definitely is. The psychedelic and electronic project really transports you to this dimension that feels like if Hatsune Miku programmed Silent Hill. The album feels like that of a dream, just not a particularly exciting one. 

Instrumentation wise, Mayniel is pretty in her bag with verby trumpets,tactile percussion and some of the clearest sounding tones she’s made in her career. This project is everything you’d expect, but not much of what I was crossing my fingers for. At its best, the project is a Playstation game or some other dimension medieval DJ set. At its worst, it’s getting a brain freeze while looking at the sun.

Some of the strongest moments on the album are from songs like “plague dogs,” which is a hauntingly beautiful ballad that sounds like a Halfaxa-era Grimes song. The project had some iconic features as well, like A.G. Cook co-writing and producing the track “thank you for recording” with the same plucky synths he’s known for along with Swedish rapper Yung Lean on the track “take me by the hand.” In hindsight, the album did feel distinctly European. Interpret that however you desire.

Some of Oklou’s best vocals end up on this album; There were points where I wanted even less of her iconic vocal chain just so I could hear more of the raw delivery. I was hoping this album would be her outgrowing some tendencies she had on her previous release, but it seems she dug her heels in and leaned even further into her electronic niche, at times for better and others for worse. 

In conclusion, I feel torn. I do enjoy the album and can already tell that it will only grow on me, but simultaneously already desire another project,just to see what else Mayniel can make and if it’s possible to see how she can push her artistic boundaries even further. If I’m already wanting more though, I guess the album can’t be all that disappointing. At 13 tracks and 35 minutes long, the project was a tight transition song to song, but I still feel that there was fat that could’ve been trimmed away. Her previous release, Galore, is categorized as a mixtape despite being full album length. Perhaps because of this distinction, I was hoping her debut would be this earth-shattering distinction between the two, but unfortunately a solid portion simply feels like the same nachos from her previous work but reheated. The creative world the album plays in actually lures me more to the side of recommending this album than the songs themselves —not to say there aren’t good tracks on this project, as there definitely are. Is this project worth checking out? Absolutely. Is it the best Oklou release? Nah. —Jake Fabbri

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