Vietnamese indie artist earns kudos from American online music publication

“‘Came’, his beguiling sophomore album, can be described as a collection of contradictions: greyscale and prismatic, deadening and exuberant, baleful and inviting.”

It called Duc’s brainchild a “shape-shifting second album” and that the 18-year-old artist “wrings beauty out of chaos with fractured, vignette-like compositions.”

Pitchfork stated that while the Hanoi artist was not musically trained, he was able to get his messages across using a robotic voice, “describing a craving for sexual pleasure and the fear of coming out as queer as two competing, compounding sources of loneliness.”

The album review also pointed out that he incorporated lots of raw metallic noise in the title track due to the influence of his father’s metal sculpture art.

Duc shared the news on his Facebook account, writing he “got no words to describe the thrills.”

‘Came’ earned a score of 7.5, no little achievement compared to Pitchfork’s high standards. This is the second Vietnamese album ever reviewed by Pitchfork, following indie band Ran Cap Duoi’s ‘Ngu Ngay Ngay Ngay Tan The’ (rough translation: Sleep On Doomsday).

His album even earned a higher mark than some of the albums from major artists, including Adele’s 25 (7.3), Taylor Swift’s Lover (7.1), and BTS’ Be (7.0).