Polly Mackey, aka Art School Girlfriend London-based musician/ producer resurfaces with the new single “Doing Laps." This track once again finds her getting into the quieter recesses of life and online communication. The third single off her forthcoming third full-length, Lean In, the song is a deeply personal investigation of digital fatigue, one of translating overbearing abstract weight from modern platform culture into something palpably human, and somehow pretty. “Doing Laps” leaves listeners in a beautiful, glistening sound world. Confusing the listener as much as the exhaustion that inspired them, Mackey’s intimate but poised vocal delivery glides sweetly above the production, managing to convey that age-old tension between artistic labor and the unblinking gaze of the online world.
“Doing Laps” is all about contrast. It may be weighed down by a melodic core that ponders the modern trappings of visibility and commodification, but the music feels feather light, bordering on gauzy. It’s a delicate tightrope walk, the one that transforms personal frustration into a shared, nearly meditative experience for you, crowded around the speaker. There’s little artifice here, no grand pronouncements that you can tell will be contradicted before the next scene, but small, relatable observations, a moment of looking around amid the incessant noise of digital life.
“Doing Laps” is a meditative break and an acknowledgement of the invisible labor we all do online and the emotional toll it can take. In converting this long-standing battle into ethereal, artful pop, Art School Girlfriend most certainly delivers on the promise to make something that captures current anxieties and creates music that hits you both on the thought process and the emotions. As we eagerly await the release of "Lean In," this one single demonstrates that Mackey is capable of creating songs as thought-provoking as they are melodically entrancing.
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Tags
Indie pop