“Doll Online,” Clark Rainbow’s first extended play, gives listeners a refreshingly optimistic take on the ups and downs of a life revolving around the internet.
Rainbow, who told WHUS she makes “fun little beepy songs in my room” in a November interview, first gained traction for her song “beReal,” which she dropped June 19 and said she “wrote about how lame AI art is” in a Dec. 1 TikTok post.
The song has garnered over 2.43 million views on Spotify to date.
Through Rainbow’s next six singles between “beReal” and “Doll Online,” she establishes herself in the same genre spaces as works such as “Serial Experiments Lain,” “Puella Magi Madoka Magica,” “Neon Genesis: Evangelion” and “Needy Streamer Overload,” but without the overtly disturbing psychological horror aspects.
The genre is still there, just from Rainbow’s perspective rather than an omniscient outsider’s point of view. The experiences in her songs feel lived in rather than romanticized or exaggerated. Yearning to see someone “even if it’s not real” hits like a truck and anyone navigating a situationship could use “pandora” on loop to get by.
The five-track EP, with a runtime just shy of 15 minutes, touches on love, fear and desperation in the digital age.
“Doll Online” begins with “user_97;” first released as a single on Jan. 30, the track epitomizes the feeling of e-dating over Discord without actually knowing who is on the other side of the screen. (Rainbow later confirmed that the song was about getting catfished on the platform, in a March 3 Instagram post.)
Soft, peppy synths paint a dreamy soundscape, juxtaposed with the implication that Rainbow’s character is isolated from the people around her.
Instead, she takes comfort in the idea of her online lover. An idea that, as she admits, could shatter at any moment if the other person simply turns on their camera.
Resigning herself to “keep me guessing” with “the picture that you sent before,” the energetic song glides into track two, “please dont hack me!!!!”
This track leans into hyperpop, with a busier chorus and laid-back verses, while narrating from the perspective of a girl whose sense of identity and agency exists almost entirely on her desktop.
Think Ninjiraichi, but less “I love my computer” and more “I’m scared of what’s left of me without it.”
The song’s beat and Rainbow’s charming but punchy vocals almost overtake lines such as “That girl’s a money maker / and everything she’s worth is on that PC / can a virus be as deadly / as a weapon, even if it can’t make me bleed.”
While the EP does not officially have a title track, track three, “whatever you want!!,” comes closest.
The song stacks up to the likes of “Virtual Angel” by ARTMS and “INTERNET OVERDOSE feat KOTOKO” by Aiobahn +81 in both feel and implications.
Overt references to “the wired” from “Serial Experiments: Lain” and “the binary cross” paint a scene of this internet doll slowly consuming someone, desperate to keep them hooked all day.
Without the hindsight that Rainbow wrote it about gacha game addiction, “whatever you want!!” reads as either someone codependent keeping their partner (or parasocial audience) glued to the screen, or Rainbow humanizing the algorithms that control more of everyone’s lives and its functions with each passing day.
Track four, “heart in a letter,” cranks the codependency up to 11, with addictive vocal chops and entrancing synths. The song gives the EP’s first clear confirmation of how unreciprocated her character’s feelings are.
Self-sacrifice to the point of scaring another person off is par for the course with this genre, but Rainbow doesn’t poke too far into the self-destructive aspect or wallow in it the way some edgier media does.
Even when the theme is implied, “heart in a letter” still leaves room to dance and bang your head to rather than leaving listeners shell-shocked the way a “Needy Streamer Overload” playthrough would.
The closest character that comes to mind to Rainbow’s “Doll Online” at this point is Mahiru Shiina from DECO*27’s “MILGRAM” project.
The album closes with “as i am,” a track that feels more like conventional dance and bedroom pop.
While it’s far less intense-sounding than the EP’s other songs, “as i am” taps into the insecurity and genuine fear around people being “accepting” about mental health and other issues when it’s something they’re equipped to handle, but dipping as soon as it gets too “intense” or becomes something still more heavily stigmatized.
Lines such as “will you hold my hand till you can’t go on? / Will you love someone who gets so much wrong” land like a sucker punch for anyone who finds themself in her shoes.
“Doll Online” doesn’t challenge Rainbow’s established genre or hold extremely intentional lyricism. Rainbow previously told WHUS that she keeps her songs “a little vague so people can take what they want from it.”
Either way, it’s been less than a year since “beReal.” The internet’s resident doll has the rest of her career to explore other sounds.
Though the EP was short, it is cohesive. Rainbow has uploaded music monthly since “beReal,” so listeners probably don’t have to wait long until she drops something new.
