"With 2023's PORTALS, Melanie Martinez further fleshes out her high-concept pop, crafting an album that plays enticingly like Alice in a goth Wonderland. Arriving on the heels of a two-year hiatus, the record is the singer's first not to feature her empath "Cry Baby" persona, the focus of both 2015's Cry Baby and 2019's K-12. Thematically, PORTALS is an album about death and rebirth with songs that speak to Martinez's ongoing knack for reinventing her sci-fantasy baby girl aesthetic in ever more musically nuanced and diaristic ways".