2019’s Heard It in a Past Life is the kind of album that seems destined to define a career. An album built on the virality of a novice songwriter being discovered in a classroom; an album building from that initial song well enough to become a breakthrough in its own right. As these stories go, there’s a common pattern that can unfurl, where artists escape, retreating to become dentists or cobblers or hermits, only to let their own mythology grow in their absence. Rogers turned towards seclusion in Maine and eventually graduate school, and uncertainty from fans brewed as to if or when she would return to music.
Surrender, a follow-up that seems hard to bill as long-awaited, even if it was, is a rousing success, an album that sits snugly next to her debut as a peer, not a successor. As a pop record, it avoids most of the typical genre pratfalls. Yes, some of the lyrics are worn out, and tracks like “Want Want” are just on the edge of becoming a cloying earworm, but all throughout Rogers keeps things anthemic. Take “Be Cool” an understated and charming song about friendship and youth, that should come off as treacly from someone who graduated from Harvard Divinity. Instead, Rogers’ employs a busy drum machine and transitions to a snarl that gives the track the edge it needs. “Shatter” similarly soars in a way that’s so obvious, it’s hard to believe it hasn’t been written before, but Rogers keeps the tempo up and lets the track build with enthusiasm and vigor until, at the end, the track simply dissolves in her own exhaustion.
If her debut proved that Rogers could helm the kind of cross-generational, blockbuster breakout that artists like her dream of, Surrender proves that she can do it again, and even flex her versatility in the process. Rogers is rejuvenated, and full of ideas, and thankfully, it seems she is here to stay.
