Art School Girlfriend's 'Lean In' Review: A Generous Yet Evasive Sonic Journey
Polly Mackey, performing as Art School Girlfriend, delivers a subtle and supple auditory experience with her third studio album, Lean In. This sophisticated collection of tracks can, at its best, sweep listeners away on an immersive magic carpet ride, granting them an empowering aerial perspective on their own emotional landscapes through its intricate sound design.
Crafting a Daydreaming Distance
Mackey aimed for a hyper-real, intimate yet slightly removed vocal effect on this record, a daydreaming distance she masterfully achieves. By singing into a condenser microphone over layered, looped synths with a shoegaze influence, she creates a sound that is both enveloping and elusive. At its peak, this approach lifts the audience into a state of audio altitude, while at its weakest, the elegantly constructed patterns risk dissolving into the background like a guided meditation, leaving some listeners adrift.
Thematic Depth and Musical Execution
The album grapples with profound themes including grief, joy, love, anxiety, hopelessness, hopefulness, age, capitalism, and technology. These concepts can send listeners floating or spiraling on tangential thoughts, mirroring the record's ethereal nature. On the opening track, "Doing Laps," Mackey gently asks, "Am I doing it for you?" in a refrain that feels more introspective than directed outward. Splashy synth notes scatter across a slow-building tune, with a twitching beat that becomes quirkily addictive as her question lingers in the air.
This introspective quality makes sense given Mackey's personal context. The Wrexham-raised artist wrote Lean In during a period of professional indecision. Despite a sell-out tour following her previous release, X, she contemplated retreating from her public-facing persona to focus on production and building her own studio. Since her early days with the shoegaze band Deaf Club, Mackey has shown a preference for protecting her songs' privacy within a cocoon of sound, with electronic music serving as her creative ivory tower.
Bursts of Energy and Emotional Assurance
However, Mackey breaks free from this cocoon on the album's second track, "L.Y.A.T.T. (Love You All The Time)," which features a giddy house pulse. This danceable, positive song hymns the security of love in unstable times, with lyrics like, "On the days that we don't speak that much at all, when your mind is moving somewhere I can't go, it's a kick inside that's deep enough to know, I know that I love you all the time." Similar assurances anchor "The Peaks," where a gothic sludge of electric guitar underpins simple chorus promises of, "I won't leave."
Fans might find insights into Mackey's relationship with indie folk singer-songwriter Marika Hackman, whom she married in 2024—a partnership described as "the stuff of gay indie pop legend." The album offers rich textural pleasures, from the tapping, ASMR percussion of "Lines" to the pretty, revolving reverberations of "The Field" and the melding of piano, vocoder, and crunchy effects in "Framer."
Critique and Overall Impression
While Mackey's voice is undeniably lovely, it sometimes functions as a ghostly pillow rather than a dynamic instrument, leaving listeners grasping for more identity in the songs. At times, the spacious soundscape can feel too evasive, cutting the audience adrift. Yet, for the most part, Lean In provides a safe space to shift perspectives and process complex ideas without centering on Mackey herself. The result is a generous, intelligent, and occasionally evasive body of work that invites deep reflection.
