“Nuketown Blues”

You may know Carl-Mikael Berlander as Gud, or Yung Gud: a self-described misanthrope and an architect of cataclysmic pain music from Yung Lean, Ecco2K, and Rx Papi. When the 30-year-old Stockholm producer finds reprieve, he can turn R&B pastiche into pageantry and make car sex sound like astral projection. On this brighter side of the spectrum, hedonism lingers like chronic illness. In his work as Rooster, Berlander finds an unsettled middle ground. His new album Rooster Slipped, which collects songs recorded from 2016 to the present, is anchored by its painfully candid centerpiece, “Nuketown Blues,” a sludgy, snare-driven trunk-rattler that doubles as a disjointed ballad.

There’s a Chrysler parked in the driveway; Gud’s beat could be knocking from its subwoofers, its treble chiming like the key was left in the ignition. Our protagonist is restless and desperate, a sleazebag toying with a rich girl he’s hiding something from. Right when he’s ready to show his softer side (“I kinda like you”), he can’t help but change the subject: “I got work in the morning,” he croaks, trailing off as he repeats it. “Nuketown Blues” is compelling for how unafraid it is to show the scaffolding: Berlander’s hoarse melodies and aversion to rhyme; his elegiac splashes of fireworks and piano; the chintzy slide whistles and crash cymbals. There’s just enough levity to mask that all-too-familiar sinking feeling. Only just.