ALBUM REVIEW: Art School Girlfriend – Soft Landing

Fiction

Released: 04.08.23

Initially Polly Mackey, pseudonymously known as Art School Girlfriend, opens her newest album with a relatively pacey tune, A Place To Lie, followed up hurriedly by Close To The Clouds. So far so esoterically indie dance. However, getting to Real Life with its more intimate confessional tone we’re now well and truly ‘in it’ as this song slows us down, and shows us the person behind the music, or does it?

We could get pretty meta here as it’s still filtered, yet feels more about truth. This song has added strings by Chloe Kraemer and Alfie Johns and intertwined backing vocals from Marika Hackman. It stands out, and even with other songs like The Weeks also skipping and swooning, it’s the broody and beguiling tone of Real Life that stitches all the other tunes together, even as the pace picks up, propelling us forward unable to fully leave everything behind.