New Yorker Grace Ives broke out as a bedroom pop artist, self-producing 2nd, her 2019 debut, on her Roland MC-505 and carefully expanding her sound for 2022’s appealingly messy Janky Star. Her third album abandons caution in windswept, hyperdetailed songs that streak by like big city streetlights and shimmer with cosmic awe.
The artwork for Girlfriend
Ives escaped her bedroom in more than one sense. Janky Star reflected her development of a healthier relationship to substances, yet she hit new lows after its release, making sobriety non-negotiable. She went to write in California, finding safety in a fresh context rather than trying to change alone at home. Her determination and vulnerability fuel Girlfriend, which shares the conspiratorial sweetness and broken-mirror glitter of cult pop classics by Lorde (Melodrama) and Sky Ferreira (Night Time, My Time).
Ives’ songs bubble with detail – Avalanche seethes with glitchy synths, roiling piano, sharp strings and EDM shards – but never smother her off-the-cuff vocals, which nudge melodies into earworms. There are nods to British club classics: Fire borrows the existential rush of Olive’s You’re Not Alone; standout Stupid Bitches, a joyful exorcism, evokes Basement Jaxx’s Where’s Your Head At.
Ives is candid about what she is exorcising. The lurching Drink Up exposes the self-bargaining mentality of addiction, her fragmented lines suggesting someone accustomed to sneaking around. “I’m not your sea of love,” she sings on Trouble, referencing a famous cover by Cat Power, who has been open about her own dependency problems. But Ives is also gentle with herself: on Garden she is romanced by the potential of freedom “from the hell of my pride”, a sensation blasted through this bolshie, beautiful rebirth.