‘Nymph’ is the debut album from London rapper and singer Shygirl, and it sees the 29-year-old take us on a late night voyage through club genres, collabing with a host of bleeding edge producers along the way. With Mura Masa, Arca and Sega Bodega on board it’s a splendid record that jinks around with great confidence while Shygirl herself delivers vocals that are versatile and skilful, blending beautiful digitised melody lines with abject pop filth.
First among the filth is Coochie (a bedtime story). It’s ostensibly a queer slow-jam on carnal pleasure and matches breathy singing with catchy computerised hooks. It’s an excellent pop song and one can imagine a father’s sense of rising panic when his daughter insists on playing it in the car on the school run.
Elsewhere, Firefly combines a stuttering guitar melody with breakbeats and dynamic, layered vocals. This is one of the album’s strongest tracks, with a hugely distinctive sonic bed and very catchy melodies.
This is despite the production actually recalling Out of Your Mind by Victoria Beckham, Dane Bowers and True Steppers, a song that has subsequently become a bit of a punchline.
There is also space here for fantastic tonal explorations with the 59-second rap ditty Missin u, Wildfire’s old skool garage and the squelchy club bass of Poison, another memorable cut that varies tempo with distinction.
If there is a limitation behind ‘Nymph’, it is that this pop album does not actually contain any solid gold pop songs, but in every other way this is an extremely impressive debut.
Shygirl Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu December 01 2022 - LONDON Printworks
Fri December 02 2022 - MANCHESTER Albert Hall
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