Stick or twist? A question that has tortured many a gambler over the years. With music, hitting the recording studio poses a similarly ominous question. Both choices carry an element of risk. A sudden, unexpected change of sound can alienate your fanbase, but keep everything exactly how it is and things can turn incredibly stale, incredibly quickly.
If Prestige is anything to go by, Girl Ray aren’t fazed by this decision at all. After making one hell of a statement with 2019’s pop-infused Girl, you’d be a fool to bet that they’d stay standing still for long. However, that’s exactly what they’ve done. Each and every track on their third album drips with the same type of disco nonsense as their previous effort. ‘True Love’ dishes out enough grooves to fill up Studio 54 ten times over, while the late-afternoon glow of ‘Begging You Now’ takes bedroom pop out of the house and into the garden for some well-earned Vitamin D.
For many artists this lack of exploration would be seen as a negative, but in a lot of ways Girl Ray’s solidification of their newfound pop attitude is perhaps the most interesting move they could have made. Instead of venturing off into the sonic wilderness, or reverting to their old indie-adjacent sound, the group have decided to do things their own way, proving that sometimes the most radical thing to do, is to do nothing at all.
