Girl Ray

w/ The Softies and Foamboy

Girl Ray have never been afraid of switching it up. In the space of just three albums they’ve gone from janglepop darlings to being one of the most exhilarating and original pop bands around. Making their timely return with an album of unapologetically escapist alt-pop anthems, they shape-shift again on their new album, Prestige, as they look back to the post-disco dancefloors of the early eighties with a record that feels almost subversive in its sanguinity.

Co-produced by Grammy Award winning producer, Ben H. Allen (M.I.A, Gnarls Barkley, Christina Aguilera, Deerhunter) along with the band’s singer and songwriter Poppy Hankin Prestige takes the shambolic charm of their debut and the indiefied R&B of their last album and injects it with a booster shot of Hi-NRG eighties disco pop.

Bringing their deep understanding of modern pop and the bittersweet melodies of ABBA and Kate Bush and mixing it all together with the post-punk playfulness of Orange Juice and a love of Donna Summer and Yellow Magic Orchestra, Girl Ray have come back with a life affirming celebration of the transformative power of pop music at its most glorious.

Formed when they were still at school, North Londoners Poppy Hankin, Sophie Moss and Iris McConnell released a near perfect string of heartfelt indie singles - beginning with ‘Trouble’ in 2016 - that owed as much to faux naïfs like Jonathan Richman and Marine Girls as it did contemporaries like Cate Le Bon. Their debut album Earl Grey was released to widespread critical acclaim a year later, before they went through a full sonic make over on its follow up. Girl, in 2019.

Packing up their indie credentials and following their hearts into frothier waters, their second album found them channelling their inner Ariana Grande as they doubled down on their love of R&B and chart pop with the help of Christine and The Queens producer Ash Workman; ending up with something that combined the excitement of Rihanna’s ‘If It’s Lovin’ That You Want’ with the eye-rolling, impenetrable humour of a girl gang. And now with Prestige they switch it up all over again.

Waiting for a spark of inspiration for where they might take the Girl Ray sound next, Poppy found it in Pose, the television drama about New York City’s queer ballroom scene in the 80s. Squashed into the back of a tour bus driving around Europe at the beginning of 2020, looking out of the window at the rain outside, missing her girlfriend back home and looking for an escape, she started recording demos inspired by its soundtrack on her laptop in the back of the bus and opened up a make-believe club in her imagination. A club that was a big-hearted celebration of inclusivity and individuality and glamour; everything she felt was missing from the rain soaked post-Brexit landscape they were driving through. The club was called Prestige.

“That’s one of the ideas we started with”, she says. “Then also Dua Lipa put out her record and there was Kylie, Roisin Murphy, Lizzo and Jessie Ware; all of these very amazing, powerful pop women doing disco in a really cool sleek way.”

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