Girl Ray “Prestige” Album Review
Disco, for better or worse (depending on who’s making it), is sliding back into the spotlight of popular music. Long gone are the days of Chicago’s notorious Disco Demolition Night—a petty and drunken White Sox promotional event reeking of racist and homophobic undertones. On the whole, pop music has been gradually leaning more and more upon disco’s style and influence as inspiration, whether it be Dua Lipa’s newest single “Houdini” or Jessie Ware’s That! Feels! Good! By mixing and mashing the widespread influences of house music and swinging funk, the genre has been revitalized and built upon in incredible ways in the past several years.
Since disco-inspired music is a party that’s too damn fun to ignore, London based trio Girl Ray released their third album, Prestige, to play their part in paying homage to disco’s legacy. The twelve-track LP was titled and inspired by Poppy Hankin’s interest in the New York Ballroom scene of the 1980s and her listening of disco on their pre-pandemic tour.
Hankin, Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss maintained their tried and true indie roots from their first two albums, but dove deeper into the world of synthesizers and electronic equipment, expanding their sound into something that sounds completely fresh for Girl Ray.
For this project, Girl Ray joined forces with producer Ben H. Allen who’s had a hand in projects such as Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere and Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. The result of their collaboration is an LP that keeps the bass pounding and the snare clapping to a persistently upbeat tempo. The only digressions in the momentum are the glimmering digressions of synthesizer that float between verses. Ultimately, the album functions as a score to a fictional night out to Girl Ray’s “Club Prestige” where a chance encounter on the dance floor is all but guaranteed.
As effective as Girl Ray was at creating a solid dance album that evokes indie disco revolutionaries such as Orange Juice or The Tom-Tom Club, they commit to their influence a little too well. Their step away from the foundational sound of their first two albums is most definitely a step in the right direction, but one can’t help but feel that they didn’t go far enough with inspiration that was fueling Prestige. The album’s final track, “Give Me Your Love,” is by far the strongest on the album, a song that could easily go toe-to-toe with any Top 40 pop hit. It’s for this reason that “Give Me Your Love” makes you wish there were three or four more tracks just like it on the record.
Working with Hot Chip’s Allen Doyle and Joe Goddard, Girl Ray made “Give Me Your Love” into a bouncy, fun and dynamic seven-minute banger. There are ecstatic highs and moody lows. You never know what you’re going to hear next, but even if they throw in some steel drums or vocoders, everything still sounds completely natural. The previous eleven tracks could all be beneficial additions to any house party playlist, but “Give Me Your Love” demands to be played out of a public PA system, full volume, no talking, only dancing.
For any minor pitfalls Prestige might possess, we ultimately have nothing but good things to look forward to with Girl Ray as they continue on their path of blending disco into their own style of music. Considering that their recent release “Hurt So Bad,” a leftover track from Prestige, follows the same cues as “Give Me Your Love,” it’s not crazy to imagine Girl Ray’s popularity reaching the same heights of artists like MUNA or Chappell Roan.