Album review: GG Magree – Spit Love

GG Magree’s soul was forged in the club. It certainly helped that her dad owned one of the most historic gay clubs in her native Australia, and those electrifying, hedonistic nights on the dancefloor week after week have all been distilled into her debut album.

Yet beneath the thick walls of pounding synths is a grittier, guitar-driven edge and while these two disparate sounds have been slotted together in many different combinations over the years, GG is coagulating them differently. In fact, this is a record that probably only she could make.

True to that spirit, by the time the tape stops running, you know exactly who GG Magree is. She’s a figure of empowerment, not just oozing sexuality but celebrating it every single second. ‘I’ll cut the tension with my tongue / We’ll fuck like Heaven, baby,’ she sings delicately across the sinewy industrial beats of Bleed, while the pulsing Wet Dreams is a portal to a dungeon full of flashing lights and writhing bodies.

At the same time, there’s also a lot she wants to explore musically speaking. Siren is an unabashed, sugary EDM floor-filler, while the dark thrum of the title-track plunges into a chunky, riff-heavy chorus unlocking her rockier shadow side. Silly Goose even get invited along to crash the party with some swaggering nu-metal on 2 Hot 2 Handle, and the melding of both artists’ sounds proves surprisingly effective.

As self-assured as she might be, GG’s also carved out space to be vulnerable. Opener Sex finds her in an emotional but still defiant place as she kicks back against those demanding she dampen down her sexual expression. When she sings, ‘I’m fucking free,’ you’re immediately on her side. It’s bookended with the equally emotive balladry of Nightmares, where she walks away with shaky hands from someone wanting to keep her trapped, in pain yet with her inner strength intact. Really, it’s a full-circle moment as well as one that reaffirms a point the whole record makes, of how multidimensional she really is, and how GG Magree is absolutely not an artist to ever underestimate.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Poppy, HEALTH, Harpy

Spit Love is out now via Rise.