Obliterated by Sound: Tranquility of a Pink Horse Review

Design by Sophie Parrish

By Christian jones

Tranquility is not the first word I would use to describe Andrew Snakez’s latest album; it’s the last. To get to the state described in its title, Tranquility of a Pink Horse, Snakez must first take us on a journey through fields of distortion and meadows of gentler longing, along the way lassoing an impressively diverse array of sonic influences into his coherent universe — simultaneously as familiar and unusual as its kitschy cover image of a pink horse mid-gallop.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP AND PAY ATTENTION, YOU’RE LISTENITNG TO THE TRANQUILITY OF A PINK HORSE,” echoes a voice with the Gigachad vocal fry of a  Monster Truck commercial on opening track “i’m sick.” It’s a goofy, parodical opening that blends meme with music — it is 2026 after all. But what follows is nowhere near as unserious. The track “horse stallion statue” has a frantic quality, in part from the shimmering electronic flourishes that skitter over Mk.gee-influenced guitar distortion. Snakez sings “You want to eat me alive/ And I let you in for one last time,” obscuring the song’s sense of emotional dread while underscoring it. 

Snakez layers his patchwork of post-genre sounds to dazzling effect; the album’s most notable moments of beauty — and there are many — emerge from these bursts of rapturous, frenetic noise. The elastic “willow tree angel of healing” feels like a trappy Sam Gelliatry, before morphing into a choral vocal atop sampled shooting sounds. “100mg of sertraline” is a textural vortex, blending video-game trap, Arca-esque soundscapes, and windchimes. But Snakez’s sense of humor is never far behind, acting as a post-ironic diffuser for moments that feel too heavy, like the sample of him hacking up a lung and sniffling towards the end of the track, or the apparition of Juice WRLD singing “the party never ends,” as the party ends. “kid’s road map area rug” starts like a more nonchalant version of JPEGMafia and Danny Brown’s Scaring the Hoes (2023), melding a casual no-fucks flow with dizzying electronic bass and Flappy Bird-type chirps.

It’s not all sonic turbulence though. The tracks “505 hat” and “home wildflower leaves wreath” have a wistful, digi-folk quality with ghostly vocals. “some crushed up goldfish” features a childish autotune that sounds like 100gecs off ketamine. The raw ballad “canon sd450” sounds like the stages of grief that comes before Samba Jean-Baptiste’s mournful acquiescence — the anger, disbelief, and denial of losing new love. Towards the end of the track, Snakes trades a sample of a girl sobbing about how lovesick she is with a church choir singing “Hallelujah.” Though these moments of serenity across the album are heightened against its other chaotic sounds, they affirm another kind of calm that exists only in the eye of the storm: to be obliterated by sound is to achieve a blissful Nirvana.

Snakez’s Tranquility of a Pink Horse blends hyper-pop, digi-folk, trap, electronic, stadium rock, shoegaze, video-game, and a host of absurd samples to create unforgettable soundscapes — initially overwhelming, but eventually addicting.