Girl Ray - Girl

The Quietus

The course of true love never did run smooth declares Lysander 135 lines into A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and so too sings Poppy Hankin 1 minute 16 seconds into Girl. North London girl gang Girl Ray’s surprisingly pop-minded second album has more in common with the bard’s saucy woodland comedy than at first you might suspect: quips, troublesome romances, and pleasing rhymes abound against the backdrop of a hazy LA summer.

Where Girl Ray’s 2017 debut Earl Grey provided sweetly-voiced lo-fi ditties, with little more than passing reference to the band’s soft spot for ‘00s-to-present day pop and R’n’B (the only clue, perhaps, being the parodying of the genres in the video for ‘Don’t Go Back at Ten’) Girl packs a powerful pop punch – the influences of the likes of Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa and Destiny’s Child, all cited by the band as sources of inspiration, clearly heard in Girl’s beats, filters and sleek production. Opening two songs ‘Girl’ and ‘Show Me More’ are a plunge into the glassy pool of this newly polished sound - the former sun-warmed and woozy; the latter vast and anthemic — and the both so catchy they could have been lab-engineered. And the hooks don’t stop there: see also the baby pleases of ‘Just Down the Hall’, squelchy synth lines of ‘Because’ and simple-but-sticky chorus of ‘Friend Like That’.

Girl’s most important commonality with 2000s/2010s chart pop/R’n’B comes in its celebration of unfuckable-with female friendship. On ‘Keep It Tight’ - a constant earworm; a song that I can’t help but play twice every time I listen to the album, and perhaps a direct tribute to Destiny’s Child’s 2012 single also titled ‘Girl’ - the voices of childhood friends Poppy, Iris and Sophie come together and sing: Girl I’m so in awe of you / I’ve known you half my life / Come round and we can talk it through / We’ll always keep it tight; a mirroring of the sentiment of Beyoncé’s line in the Destiny’s Child song, I been knowin' you since you was ten / you cannot hide from your friends. Ride-or-die friendships with other women are the most violently joyful relationships I have experienced in my life. To have this celebrated in music - girl friendship as comradeship; all-hours availability for advice; binning men who try to fuck with the clique - is utterly joyful.

So — here’s to in-jokes; to lyrics like "he dipped me like a causal fondue"; to soulmate-level friendship; to reclining, sunglassed, in shiny open-topped sports cars, and smoking in stilettos. To the escapist thrill of singing along to something so catchy you just can’t not. To Girl Ray, and to Girl, which is so much love, so much joy, and so much fun.

Share this article:

The Guardian 60

(Moshi Moshi)
The British trio have pivoted from jangly indie to pop, but the best bits of their second album lie in the spaces in between

Girl Ray’s 2017 debut album, Earl Grey, was a very particular kind of record: an indie album in a style that would have been completely familiar to someone tuning in to Radio 1 at 10pm on a Monday night in the mid-80s.

The Guardian 60

(Moshi Moshi)

Indie bands have done R&B before – you will have heard of the xx. Now, with genre boundaries more porous than ever, swapping lo-fi pop for R&B shouldn’t feel like an audacious act. This album does. One record ago, Girl Ray were a fresh-faced, lo-fi pop three-piece whose videos featured games of rounders. Now, their second outing suggests a burgeoning north London version of Haim or, perhaps, Broadcast playing the songs of Everything But the Girl.

Show Me More, released last summer, may have found Poppy Hankin, Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss still riding bicycles in the video, but their disco tune offered vastly increased quotients of slinkiness and soul. The hazy title track, meanwhile, nods to Tom Tom Club, with a swirling keyboard motif underlining how much has changed in this trio’s outlook. House piano, a rapper – PSwuave – and, on Beautiful, a reggae lilt, all have their place on Girl. These moves are still tentative, and talk of artistic progression is often the kiss of death, but Girl Ray have moved out of a place of limitations into more kaleidoscopic musicality.