Like her PC Music compatriot Hannah Diamond, GFOTY (it stands for Girlfriend of the Year) is part parody. Specifically, the persona of 26-year-old Londoner Polly-Louisa Salmon is pastiching the “basic bitch”, that memetic term denoting myopically consumerist and dispiritingly dim womanhood. On stage she carries a Starbucks cup, on record she spouts cod-profundities like “Dying alone could be hard – especially if you have a dog”.
Yet unlike Diamond’s flawlessly bland aesthetic, GFOTY’s aggressive superficiality belies a messily eclectic experimentalism. Previously dealing in the pitched-up vocals and awkwardly jolting rhythms most closely associated with her label, this record sees GFOTY unite tropes from pop-punk, post-punk, ska, industrial noise, synthpop and lame balladry under a banner of multi-layered irreverence.
The irreverence means this hugely entertaining album still belongs firmly in the PC Music universe, as does the continued exploration of the hollowness of the pop/internet fantasy. “I made you up / You made me down,” she sings on Mr E. “There’s nothing / Nothing at all.”
