Girl Ray, the North London three-piece comprising 19 year-olds Poppy Hankin (guitar/vocals), Iris McConnell (drums) and Sophie Moss (bass), have announced details of their debut album.
The much anticipated record is entitled Earl Grey and will be released on 4th August 2017 via Moshi Moshi. Today they also share the latest cut and the follow-up to the BBC 6 Music-playlisted ‰Û÷Trouble‰۪ and ‰Û÷Stupid Things‰۪ - ‰Û÷Preacher‰۪, of which Poppy said the following:
‰ÛÏI wrote the melody for the first part a few years ago on a little toy Elvis guitar that I bought in a charity shop. Its tuning was really weird, and this song was the only thing I could really get out of it. The melody suited a love song, so I went with it.‰
In the wake of a triumphant performance at the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival, Girl Ray will headline a sold out show at the Lexington in London on 23rd May 2017. Another London show, their biggest to date, has been added at The Scala on 9th November 2017. Girl Ray have also been confirmed for this year‰۪s The Great Escape, Glastonbury, Green Man and End Of The Road festivals. Full live dates are below.
Girl Ray was formed two years ago when the band were still just 16 years old and in a twist of fate as symbolic as it was bittersweet, ‰Û÷Trouble‰۪, their first single for Moshi Moshi was recorded on what would have been their final day of school.
A band whose songs document the dramas of adolescence with a wit and wistfulness far beyond their years, Girl Ray are the sound of that uncertain period in everybody‰۪s life when the rest of it starts to loom large, when feels are felt more intensely than ever before, and when every decision seems like a fork in the road on your way to adulthood. Being a teenager is a crucible of heightened emotions and transformative confusion from which the ‰Û÷real‰۪ you will ultimately emerge, having fallen in love (and out again), outgrown friendships you thought would last forever, and changed in ways you never thought possible. What you typically won‰۪t emerge with, however, is a debut album as richly evocative of the experience as ‰Û÷Earl Grey‰۪.
Recorded with their friend (and now touring guitarist) Mike O'Malley over two "intense and insane" weeks at Ramsgate's Big Jelly studios, Earl Grey is a record of invention and ambition, whose delicate, sun-dappled melodies dance around the inside of your skull like a flickering zoetrope of memories - some fond, others less so.