Girl in Red

Girl in Red, the project of Norwegian queer singer-songwriter and producer Marie Ringheim, formerly known as Lydia X, debuted with the singles I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend (2016), her stereotypical laconic bedroom-pop ditty, Summer Depression (2018), Girls (2018), and We Fell in Love in October (2018) and the EPs Chapter 1 (2018), with four of her early classics (I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend, Summer Depression, 4am, Girls), and Chapter 2 (2019), with Dead Girl in the Pool.

The album If I Could Make It Go Quiet (2021) suffers from bland and monotonous arrangements (basically just a drum-machine and generic bombastic guitars) but it tries a number of different styles: the childish singalong I'll Call You Mine, the pop-hop dirge Serotonin, the trip-hop ballad Apartment 402, the power-ballad with loud distortion Body and Mind, etc. She displays her lively fusion of Merseybeat and disco-music in the lightweight Dot and in the more austere Rue. She is frank about sex in the vitriolic disco-punk You Stupid Bitch and in the martial cabaret-ish Hornylovesickmess, two of the best moments. Nothing groundbreaking but an honest take on the "songwriter with dance-beats" format invented by Beck.