Girl In Red if i could make it go quiet

In 2012, Lena Dunham stated through the words of her autofictional character in Girls that she thought she “might be the voice of my generation, or, at least, a voice of a generation”. Of course, she wasn’t. Now, almost ten years on, Gen-Zers could really have found their forthright spokesperson: Norway’s Marie Ulven.

Having been writing and releasing music as Girl In Red since she was 16, Ulven first made herself known with the FINNEAS-produced single ‘Serotonin’, a blunt anthem about mental health and treatment, with rapped bars over loud guitars. Classic guitar rock is a major influence on her debut album, building the perfect background for unapologetic lyrics the like of ‘Hornylovesickmess’ – yes, girls do talk about sex and feel horny too – or ‘Did You Come’. 

Ulver’s songwriting is so fresh that she gets away with being overly referential – even when the sound of ’90s indie-rock breaks through her tracks (as it happens in ‘You Stupid Bitch’ and ‘Rue’), or she drops the Bon Iver-ish, heard-it-all-before opening of ‘.’. Closing with ‘It Would Feel Like This’, an instrumental outro completing the sentence of the record’s title, If I Could Make It Go Quiet is the first step towards a great future for a songwriter unafraid to make pop-rock music in a post-human era.