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**Róisín Murphy – Hairless Toys**
★★★★☆

After a seven-year hiatus from solo recordings, the gloriously eccentric Róisín Murphy returned in 2015 with *Hairless Toys*, an album that felt both like a natural evolution and a bold reinvention. Following the commercial disappointment of 2007's *Overpowered* – a disco-funk masterpiece that deserved better – Murphy had retreated from the major label circus, spending years honing her craft in smaller venues and collaborating with underground producers. This period of artistic gestation proved invaluable, as *Hairless Toys* emerged as her most cohesive and adventurous statement yet.

The album finds Murphy diving headfirst into a kaleidoscopic blend of electronic experimentation, art-pop sophistication, and dance floor euphoria. Working primarily with longtime collaborator Eddie Stevens, she crafts a sonic palette that draws from krautrock's motorik rhythms, disco's hedonistic pulse, and avant-garde electronica's boundary-pushing sensibilities. It's a record that refuses easy categorisation – part club banger, part art installation, wholly captivating.

Opening with the hypnotic "Gone Fishing," Murphy immediately establishes the album's otherworldly atmosphere. Her voice, always her greatest instrument, floats over a bed of synthetic textures and insistent rhythms like smoke through a neon-lit maze. The track's repetitive mantra-like quality recalls both Kraftwerk's mechanical precision and Grace Jones's commanding presence, yet sounds utterly contemporary.

The album's centrepiece, "Evil Eyes," stands as perhaps Murphy's finest four minutes on record. Built around a relentless electronic pulse that could power a small city, the song showcases her remarkable vocal range and theatrical instincts. She morphs from sultry seductress to otherworldly siren, her voice multi-tracked into a choir of selves that's both alluring and slightly unnerving. It's pop music as performance art, accessible yet challenging.

"Exploitation" proves equally mesmerising, with Murphy delivering a master class in vocal gymnastics over a backdrop that sounds like robots having an existential crisis. The song's title might suggest a critique of the music industry's machinations, but Murphy's delivery is too playful, too knowing to feel bitter. Instead, it's a celebration of artifice and construction, a reminder that the best pop music has always been about beautiful lies.

The gorgeous "Unputdownable" offers the album's most tender moment, Murphy's voice floating over lush orchestration that wouldn't sound out of place on a lost Broadcast recording. It's a love song that feels genuinely romantic despite its electronic framework, proving that warmth and humanity can flourish even in the most synthetic environments.

Not every track reaches these heights – "Ink" meanders somewhat, and "Uninvited Guest" occasionally feels more like an interesting experiment than a fully realised song. But these minor stumbles hardly diminish the album's overall impact. Murphy's fearless commitment to her artistic vision, combined with production that's both immaculate and adventurous, creates a listening experience that rewards repeated attention.

What makes *Hairless Toys* particularly impressive is how it manages to sound both futuristic and timeless. Murphy draws from decades of electronic music history while pushing forward into uncharted territory. Her vocals, always theatrical but never mannered, serve as the perfect guide through this sonic landscape. She can channel Donna Summer's disco goddess energy one moment and Laurie Anderson's avant-garde intellectualism the next, often within the same song.

The album's influence has grown steadily since its release, inspiring a generation of artists to embrace both pop accessibility and experimental adventurousness. FKA twigs, Kelela, and countless others have followed paths that Murphy helped illuminate with this record. It stands as proof that electronic music can be both cerebrally stimulating and physically moving, that pop music can challenge conventions while still making people dance.

*Hairless Toys* represents Murphy at her most confident and creative, a fearless explorer mapping new territories in electronic pop. It's an album that reveals new details with each listen, a gorgeous puzzle that never quite solves itself. In an era of increasingly homogenised pop music, Murphy's refusal to compromise her vision feels both revolutionary and necessary. This is art-pop of the highest order, simultaneously alien and deeply human.