Photo by Ellie Connor Phillips
The three members of Girl Ray banded together just three years ago at high school in London, but they already sound ageless on their debut, Earl Grey. There’s something clubby to the album, not in an electronic unce-unce sense, but in a familial, us-versus-them sense. Heartache and love are the main focus, and in true teenage fashion, they sound big in Girl Ray’s small world.
“Trouble” is arguably the band’s best song so far, and it doesn’t even officially appear on Earl Grey (it’s a standalone single that’s tacked onto the digital version). The track radiates warmth, thanks to the simple guitar-bass-drums setup and Poppy Hankin’s pastel voice. It seems cosmically perfect that the members’ school is the same one where the Kinks formed. Girl Ray shares the same golden-hued DNA. If they had formed a half-century earlier, we would’ve heard them on a Wes Anderson soundtrack by now.
“Trouble” appears on Earl Grey, out now.
–Art Levy // host, Sunday 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., producer, My KUTX