Music / Underscores

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April Harper Grey (born April 21, 2000) is a musician from San Francisco. Making waves in the Hyperpop scene, April has managed to carve out her own unique blend of the former, Alternative Rock, Folk, and many other genres. After a series of EPs released between 2016 and 2020, she released her debut album fishmonger to the public on March 25, 2021, receiving praise for its experimental nature and varied sounds. A follow-up EP titled boneyard aka fearmonger was released later that same year.

In 2023, April would follow up the acclaimed debut and EP with her most ambitious project to date: Wallsocket, a Concept Album set in the fictional small town, dealing with the lives of three high school girls. The rollout for this album included several music videos and an Alternate Reality Game carried over multiple websites. The album was released on September 22, 2023 to further acclaim by both fans and critics for its tackling of transgender issues, religious trauma, classism, and much more.

Discography

• fishmonger (2021)
• boneyard aka fearmonger (2021)
• Wallsocket (2023)
• U (2026)

Spoiled little tropes:

• A cappella: "Good luck final girl" ends with April singing with no instrumental.
• Album Closure: "Good luck final girl" is a soft acoustic ballad that ends "Wallsocket" on a very somber, bleak note.
• all lowercase letters: The songs on Wallsocket are stylized in sentence case (where only the first letter is capitalized).
• Arc Words: The phrase "good luck!" is heard repeatedly throughout "Wallsocket". "[It] comes back around" appears several times as well, evoking the Arc Symbol.
• Arc Symbol: The horseshoe on the cover of Wallsocket. April says the album was partially inspired by The Horseshoe Effect, the idea that left-wing ideology and right-wing ideology, when taken to their extremes, resemble each other more than they differ.
• Bank Robbery: Played with in "Cops and robbers," which is about a bank teller who embezzles hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bank they work at, then makes a run for the country.
  When was the last time you saw a guy with a ski mask and a gun
  Get on the inside?
• Concept Album: Wallsocket, centering around three high school girls and the problems they face growing up in the titular small town.
• Darker and Edgier: ''Wallsocket' is much more bleak and uncomfortable than the previous projects in Underscores' discography, delving into trans trauma, pedophilia, military trauma, and more.
• Epic Rocking: "Dry land 2001" and "Geez louise" both clock in at over 7 minutes, and "CCTV" at over 8 minutes.
• Genre Roulette: April draws influence from a vast number of genres and blends them together in her songs.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Johnny johnny johnny" is a catchy and poppy song about a young girl being groomed by a pedophile.
• Song Style Shift: "Geez louise" shifts from a hard rock/punk, to twangy country, before transitioning to a quiet bridge, then back to loud industrial rock.
• Shout-Out:
  • The lyric "He wiggles when he walks" on "Locals (girls like us)" is a reference to "Stereo" by Pavement.
  • DanceDanceRevolution and games similiar to it have been referenced a few times in April's works.
    • "You don't even know who I am" features the all the voicelines from the announcer in 4thMIX from when the player fails a song playing on loop for the entire song.
    • The first interlude for the Hometown Tour features one of the characters playing A20 PLUS.
    • The visuals for "Girls and boys" during the same tour are a Stepmania chart for the song.
    • The music video for "Music" features ITG player Zachary Palogan playing the song, which is charted by Ben Speirs, known for his SPEIRMIX series of packs. The room Palogan plays also has posters for DDR and Pump It Up.
• Secretly Wealthy: "Old money bitch" is about a girl who is the daughter of a billionaire, but pretends not to be and tries to blend in with her working class surroundings in the small town of Wallsocket. The narrator of the song pries at her resentfully, questioning how someone like her could end up there when she comes from such an important family, assuming that she must look down on the poor people who live there.
• Textless Album Cover: fishmonger and Wallsocket.
• Theme Initials: All of the male Wallsocket characters' names start with J.