They say that your 20s are a key period for identity formation, one where striking out on your own and developing a social role for yourself is a crucial task. Arguably, Gabrielle Smith took that to an extreme, spending year after year rotating between a cohort of like-minded indie pop bands, including her own project, releasing records and touring like mad. The young New Yorker lived in a state of perpetual motion through the 2010s, not only building a name for herself, but for the tight-knit group of friends and collaborators she’d formed over those years—going so far as establishing a formalized collective. As that collective splintered and relationships evolved, Smith found themselves oddly out of touch with their identity: years and years of constant activity meant little to no time spent reflecting on who she really was. Her newest album, Gabby Sword, is the outcome of over five years of renegotiation, of charting out the distinctions and overlaps between Gabrielle Smith the person and Gabby’s World the project.
While the project has had several sonic iterations since its inception in the late 2000s, Gabby’s World is best known for infectious and personal pop that toys with twee sounds but without succumbing to tired tropes. Smith and her collaborators helped popularize a sentimental style of “bedroom pop” for audiences of the 2010s. Now, in 2023, Gabby’s World retains some of the rhythmic quirks and personal charms that resonated with audiences, but Smith presents her musings over synth-pop instead. Gabby Sword’s employment of the genre doesn’t coat the gravity of Smith’s subjects with a rosy haze; it underlines it, heightening the sense of internal revolution happening. Smith co-produced the album with her wife, Barrie Lindsay, better known by her mononymic pop project Barrie—whose sound lives somewhere in the neighborhood between Yumi Zouma and TOPS. The artsy, vintage-inspired flair Barrie imbues can be an odd fit for Smith’s rhythmically entropic lyrics and delivery, but it works more often than it doesn’t.
Gabby Sword opens with multifaceted emotions, with Smith recounting the loss of her grandmother, listening to a friend’s band and coming face-to-face with the fact that life has so much left of itself to reveal. Perhaps the most pivotal of those realizations was Smith coming to terms with their gay identity, something they didn’t let themselves discover in the throes of careerism. “Closing Door,” “Corrina” and “Fabby” all take turns unpacking the realization, from the ecstasy of embracing love to engaging with past selves through newfound empathy. “Closing Door” has a Sheryl Crow-like throwback quality to it especially, making it one of Smith’s most charming hits. “Corrina” sprawls over five minutes with gentle yet propulsive instrumentals that frame Smith’s rising-sun vocals—replicating the feeling of coming into one’s own. It has the force of a coming-of-age anthem with a nuanced touch.
This newfound personal confidence forges the titular “sword,” through which Smith cuts through the baggage that has plagued her in recent years. “Just For You To Hear” is two minutes of melodramatic electro-pop supporting Smith’s heartfelt but slack voice, giving the track a needed human quality. They examine a dissipating friendship under a microscope, ultimately leaving the questions that plague it open, unanswered. “Open the Door” is similarly weighty, this time elaborating a tense relationship: “The black versus white / the taking of sides.” Rhythmic staccato lines appear at pivotal moments, elevating the stakes ever so slightly. Rock-tempoed “Magnify” casts a broader net as Smith considers the social frictions that roughened her career in the New York City tinderbox. Smith and Lindsay put Gabby Sword together towards the end of their tenure in Brooklyn before heading to Southern France, and “Magnify” feels like a badly needed nail in the coffin of Smith’s best-known career iteration. For what memories and triumphs that Smith’s 20s offered, Gabby Sword makes it clear just how unsustainable that period had been and how Smith’s recent years of introspection have solidified a desire to change course.
That changed course is not obviously pretty. “Theme from Gabby’s World” confronts the uncertain nature of Smith’s future, reckoning with unavoidable challenges and limitless potentialities. The metaphor extends over perhaps the most exciting synth-pop on the whole album: there are moments throughout where it feels like Smith could lean into this propulsive, shimmering, danceable synth-pop more, so to know they can write and produce a true banger is reassuring, even if it casts a shadow over the prior tracks. Time after time, Smith states that Gabby Sword is a turning point, and “Theme” feels like the truest manifestation of that assertion. Should the next Gabby’s World album sound closer to “Theme,” it could be a knockout. For now, Gabby Sword is a synth-laden feast of imaginative pop, loaded with context needed to map Smith’s intended trajectory. As convoluted as it can get, it shows promise, clarifying that Smith is poised to make the truest music of her career after years of catchy experimentation. It will be worth following.
Devon Chodzin is a critic and urban planner with bylines at Aquarium Drunkard, Bandcamp Daily, Slumber Mag and more. He is currently a student in Philadelphia. He lives on Twitter @bigugly.
