GIRL IN RED Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Norwegian indie talent Girl In Red kicked off her musical journey by sharing her home-recorded tunes as a teenager back in 2017. She has since become renowned for her raw lyrics and for delving into the everyday struggles and intricacies of relationships and has won a legion of fans, not least among them Taylor Swift,who invited her out on tour. Her breakout moment came with the viral sensation 'I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend,' followed by the enchanting 'We Fell in Love in October' in 2018. Fast forward to 2021, she unveiled her debut full-length album and soared up the charts. Now she is back with I'm Doing It Again Baby which comes on limited gatefold red vinyl and is full of more of her guitar-driven melodic indie-pop sounds and singalong hooks.

Review: Marie Ulven finally unveils her debut album, five years after she first won us over with 'I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend', an introverted slice of indie pop that rode the wave of deeply personal and quirky coming-of-age artists at the time. Since then, asking 'do you like Girl In Red' became a kind of code for 'are you gay?', with subsequent songs tackling issues around sexuality, gender and identity head on.

So this long form outing comes with weighty expectations, and it doesn't disappoint. With lyrics that hold little back, from accusing a partner of cheating by asking if they, and their infidel mate, came, through to 'Serotonin''s focus on the numbness and emptiness that can swallow us whole, there is plenty that will resonate irrespective of your age. Set to an instrumental score that owes much to the damaged and dejected indie rock of the 1990s, it's a wonderfully damaged thing.