Album Review: Girli – Matriarchy
2 min read
London artist girli has been grinding a path on the independent pop scene for almost a decade now, fussing her unique personality and humour with a range of genre-bending tracks that first culminated in minor hit Hot Mess back in 2017. Her debut album Odd One Out did a perfect job of showcasing what she could do, while her followup EPs grew her audience and widened her musical horizons. Now she has retuned with her highly anticipated sophomore record Matriarchy.
The album kicks off with single Be With Me, a song that perfectly encapsulates the theme of empowerment and freedom. Nothing Hurts Like a Girl adds layers to this, with girli singing from personal experience about her dating habits and experiences. It both mirroring and opposing the lyrical point of view in the previous song, helping to hammer home the album’s perspective by showing the contradicting sides to life in general. Overthinking brings this point into further clarity, lyrically highlighting the woes of being an adult. ‘I think I’m an adult now; but I forgot to eat breakfast, haven’t done my taxes; everything stresses me out.’ Instrumentally, the sound oozes with electro-pop influence, girli’s vocals sitting wonderfully in the mix. Tokyo is the first song to bring the tempo down, girli lamenting over a lost lover. It’s a great example of her memorable voice and fantastically catchy melodies.
Lose My Cool and Her Too use a driving beat to their advantage, galloping along while girli sings of confusion over exes and the illusion of fairytale love. Crush Me Up is a mid-album highlight, melding the passion and emotional honestly with the synth-pop dance backing perfectly. Made To Break settles things down somewhat, taking an indie approach to the instrumentation, while Feel My Feelings mixes a trap beat with the guitar layers to form a satisfying hybrid. The album concludes with the title track Matriarchy and Happier Her, the former being an out and out gay anthem and summing up the overall message of the album. The closer comes across as the most organic instrumentally with live drums and acoustics, while lyrically it circles back to the start, girli singing of picking herself up and moving on.
Matriarchy is a hard-hitting pop album that gives girli’s ‘mainstream’ counterparts a run for their money. The perfect mix of personal lyricism and contemporary sounds meld so perfectly together that the entire project holds you from start to finish. As far as pop albums go, this has to be one of the strongest this year so far.
Writer and Musician, Ryan Bulbeck has been published with a number of online publications, and has worked with a myriad of great artists, both as a performer, and as a producer. His most recent band The 295 are still active, playing shows around the UK.
