Shygirl's SWALLOW! is brutally romantic and often surprising

Anyone expecting a fully club-oriented sound, or even something closer to hip-hop, won’t quite find it here. Instead, alongside producers Karma Kid and Casey MQ, Shygirl has made an experimental pop album that draws on alternative sources from the 1990s, above all British trip-hop and breakbeat, and in doing so rises to the same level of aesthetic daring as contemporaries such as Charli XCX, FKA twigs, and Arca. Opening track “Alyse” dives deep into the trip-hop treasure chest, packed with ’90s textures but carrying the atmosphere of 2020s dancefloors. The standout “Lucky[Hymn]” goes deeper still. Here, Shygirl seems fully immersed in the persona of an artist from the ’90s alternative scene, as if fulfilling a childhood dream. It’s interesting that she arrives at that dream after having played the best clubs and parties around the world, and the lyric reads like a prayer of gratitude. On the surface it's a starry-eyed song about love – as almost all of SWALLOW!'s runtime is – but the violence of the video (continuing the visual story of "Alyse") suggests a whole other reading. Then comes a twist that few could have predicted. “Luvli” heads into indie rock, with a distorted bassline...