Art School Girlfriend

Torn from the pages of a diary kept by Art School Girlfriend’s Polly Mackey in 2019, her forthcoming debut album chronicles the period following her US tour in support of The Japanese House where, after returning to the UK, Mackey would end her six year relationship, leave her home of Margate and return to London.

While sleeping on a friend’s sofa, she would clock 14 hour studio days while the bones of her debut album quickly formed, beginning with its first single ‘In The Middle’. Inspired by her state of mind at the time, the single finds Mackey entirely at the mercy of her emotions. Written in the narrow corridors of Church Studios in North London, the single’s production mimics those feelings of anxiety and claustrophobia: a relentless thudding drum beat carries the track as Mackey calls out “you’re a river running fast and I jump right in” before her voice is buried in a tide of bass.

In the video, by frequent collaborator and Margate connect Tom Dream, Mackey wanders alone through a club of entranced dancers. Dream remains a throughline for Mackey since their first collaboration in the ‘Distance (Blank)’ video. She has since scored a film for Dream, ‘Shy Radicals’, a documentary inspired by a book he purchased at the book shop she co-owned in Margate, Spine Books. Alongside her own headline tour, Art School Girlfriend have toured Europe alongside Marika Hackman, the UK alongside Orlando Weeks and the US alongside The Japanese House.

Presented by Art’s Cool.

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