ART SCHOOL GIRLFRIEND

Soft Landing (Fiction)

Having cut her teeth as a youthful solo indie musician in Wrexham, her hometown, as Art School Girlfriend Polly Mackey has since settled “in Margate’s creative community”. There are two phrases in that sentence I have used without strictly understanding what they mean. Don’t mind me, though, because second Art School Girlfriend album Soft Landing is a quietly stirring suite of ambient dance-pop which tries on retro clothes – an almost Stevie Nicks-type way with blowsy anthems – but ultimately flits between production touches from too many decades to make any given one stick.

Recorded at home with an analogue electronic setup, this makes for some alluring warmth in the sound design – it might technically qualify as lo-fi, but you wouldn’t know it to hear it – and lands in territory varying from 80s coldwave to Kelly Lee Owens to Madonna circa Frozen. Mackey definitely seems to be embracing the ‘sad banger’ ethos on most of these 11 songs, meaning they’re ripe to pick up a twentysomething audience I’d suppose, but I don’t hear any kind of cynical targeting going on here.

words NOEL GARDNER