Despite one of the first things on the album you hear being synth sounds that emulate the patter of raindrops, the elevating sensation you experience throughout this record is the kind of music that you associate with sun tans and warm grass. Yes, the overall feel of the record complements this sensation, but the beauty lies in much closer inspection, as things run deeper than a promise of Spring-soaked electronica.
Art School Girlfriend has dabbled more with experimentation on her third record, Lean In. Ditching the bedroom aesthetic for a studio, this self-produced epic is the kind of electronic pop album which even those who aren’t fans of the genre will no doubt get on board with. It’s a combination of minimalist and maximalist, the kind of record that has one overarching theme but where the individual songs contained under that umbrella are clearly distinct from one another.
That raindrop-like synth on the opening track, ‘Doing Laps’, is replaced with a building and pulsing sense of excitement in ‘LYATT’ as the words “Love you all the time” are repeated over and over again, donning a beat that doesn’t ever seem to drop but instead just continues riding high and keeps you there.
ASG dabbles with funk on this record as well, which you hear in tracks such as ‘The Field’, ‘Almost Transparent’ and ‘The Peaks’. Each of these walks a similar line sonically but is completely different to one another at the same time.
In complete contrast, other songs are slow, moving, and emotional. You can hear this on the likes of ‘Save Something’ and the closing number ‘Framer’, which still keeps that electronic pop style in its heart but gives you something that you could also put on in a dark room and get lost in.
No matter what your mood, there’s a song on this record for you, and they all combine to make a platter of human emotion served on top of a tray of otherworldly instrumentation. Perhaps the rationale behind this move is the mix of emotions that ASG admits to feeling while putting this album together. It’s truly a record that embodies a specific moment in time, as what she was feeling throughout the process of making the record is reflected in the songs themselves.
“A lot of things in parallel,” she called it, “Grief, joy, love, anxiety, hopelessness, hopefulness, the effects of age, capitalism, technology.” You can call it all of those things, as they’re ever-present. But I’ll save my breath slightly and simply refer to it as a masterpiece.
Release: March 11th, 2026: Fiction Records
The Fat Angel Sings 