“Hyper-real, intimate but a bit removed,” is the vocal effect Polly Mackey sought on Lean In, her third album as Art School Girlfriend. It’s a daydreaming distance she successfully achieves by singing into a dynamic mic over sophisticated, shoegazey layers of looped synths.
This subtle, supple sound can, at best, sweep the listener up on a magic carpet ride, gaining the empowering perspective of audio altitude on their own emotions. At worst, it can find its elegantly constructed patterns dissolving into the background like a guided meditation. Similarly, its stated themes of “grief, joy, love, anxiety, hopelessness, hopefulness, age, capitalism and technology” can certainly send you floating – or spiraling – off at tangents.
