Review Summary: Aight! I'm out.
If the intro track on 2015’s most sophomorically grand odyssey was sketched briefly on paper, you’d expect to see a sort of ominous gathering or cult, with their heads hunched, oddly bowing to what appears to be a framed portrait of a young woman’s partially freckled face; nearly camouflaged by her own hands. In the background children frolic and chant the woman’s name.
“Georgia!”
Like all good illustrations, this one has another. The page turns and in a hushed and startling matter, the lights flicker technicolor, revealing the flock of children to be vanished. It’s an impulsive scene with a cryptic meaning, but frankly, unforgettable. In her debut album, UK Artist Georgia, moves swiftly with the idea of not a lot, only reciting underestimated young conversation. She’s erratic in the changes she adopts in her music, and openly willing to not completely offer the same fluids as other artists, despite the few comparisons.
At 21, the Londoner has an overwhelming knack for music, being a producer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist, with an infatuation for ethnomusicology and drums (see her banging the instrument in the raving “Move Systems” music video, or another in a live collaboration with Warpaint’s drummer Stella Mozgawa). Signing to Domino Records in May, her debut album has been in tweaking ever since. British pop and EDM are the supporting sounds in her music, but Georgia is a totally not tangible dance or pop album. She has an understanding in the generic components in the genres and tries her best to ignore the regularity to which is famed nowadays.
The greatest moment lives on the album’s intro, where a piercing chime provides a mighty melody, and a bass crucially surges underneath. It’s cut off by the end of four bars, a total of twelve seconds. The fearlessness to leave listeners limp is first sulked upon, but it gradually heals; the taste of the shrilled tune is craved in each listen, and in the meantime it leaves the audience with twelve further tracks to revel in.
Its instrumentals are elaborate and fairly raw at times. Dirty synths pose in up and down motions like a good EDM song, and the drums go from full angst to instantly kicking back every now and then. Georgia can hinder along awkward repetitions, most obvious in sampled voices, but for the sake of it is considerably clean in the onslaught of angry noise. Where she could use tidying up, there’s always a reason to not entirely do so.
She channels M.I.A. in “Move Systems”, employing a hard annunciation on her British accent and a grungy bass that’s among a collage of ethnic drums. The lyrics are witty in rhyme. The simplest example being “I went to Ms. Shiela/ she was a dealer”. The diversity in Georgia’s approach to the sound of her voice and the instrumentals are further exposed in the coming, “Heart Wrecking Animals”, possibly the stand-out track of the album. It’s a near drumless serenade of sort, applying a singly gorgeous keyboard and a synth orchestra. Rattling bass enters sparsely, and Georgia sings of damaging love. “It was more than just a heart/ it was a wrecking ball,” she professes at stages, and the tone changes immensely throughout, at one moment affirming “But it was more like a heart than a wrecking ball.”
These switches in mood seem to personify the maturity that Georgia has in the adult land, which in turn happens to harvest a genuine aspect to the 21 year old. She doesn’t own the biggest voice, or show off the essential ‘pop’ look; she’s characterized as unique, and because of that, more savvy and less sophomoric. Against Georgia‘s identifiable but abroad resemblances is the notion that it’s the beginning of an imaginably attainable career likely to be guarded by a sophisticated audience.
