When Girl Ray started out, three young women who became best friends at secondary school in Muswell Hill, they looked like another mussed-up indie band destined to scuff their guitars in front of a very minor following for a few years before giving in and getting proper jobs. Now, three albums in, squint and it’s just possible we could be looking at the new Bananarama.
As Netflix’s recent Wham! documentary has shown, back then it was highly possible for schoolmates who didn’t really know what they were doing to come a long way in pop music. There’s a charm to the early work of these Eighties pop groups that doesn’t come across in the more precisely manufactured singles of the later boy and girl bands.
The lo-fi guitars of Girl Ray’s first album, Earl Grey in 2017, were replaced by something approximating British R&B on Girl in 2019. Here, it sounds like they’ve planted both feet in the middle of the disco and asked Nile Rodgers to join on guitar, but Poppy Hankin’s voice remains soft and understated, maintaining a home-made feel.
“Talking shit in the grass would be just fine, my baby,” she sings on Hold Tight, which sounds like a scruffy cousin of George Michael’s Faith. “Call me when you want to get a Coke and sit on the wall.”
It’s hardly Studio 54. Nevertheless, Prestige is the name of their imagined perfect nightclub. On the cover they’re holding drinks, climbing the stairs beneath a vintage neon sign. It’s also the in-joke word they used to use as schoolgirls to describe something cool. “We’d just find something and rate it on how prestige it was,” bassist Sophie Moss has explained.
This album has some prestige of its own. It was produced in Atlanta by Ben H Allen, who won a Grammy for his work with Gnarls Barkley. Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, Kylie and Lizzo are all cited as influences, even though Hankin sings more like arty indie folk artist Cate Le Bon. Lead single Everybody’s Saying That sounds like Daft Punk’s Get Lucky by way of the thrift store, while Easy has the feel of Belle and Sebastian in one of their more soulful moments.
The real highlight comes at the end with Give Me Your Love, a seven-minute collaboration with two of Hot Chip that stretches tropical pop to its limits. It’s another lovely surprise from a band that could do anything next.
