Technically, No Dogs Allowed came out on 31 December 2017, a release date 21-year-old Boston student Sidney Gish has described as “mainly due to panic”. She always intends to make albums over the summer for an autumn release; a classic student, she finishes in a flap over Christmas and puts out whatever’s finished. You can’t tell – plus, No Dogs Allowed fantastically skewers the acts of casual self-sabotage and half-arsed grabs towards self-actualisation that befall every twentysomething.
Like Jens Lekman and Jonathan Richman, Gish is mordantly funny, her bleakly cute rhyming schemes souring her sweet indie-pop. The first verse to Mouth Log perfectly summarises a generation’s self-obsession yielding diminishing returns: “Just like a hate-watched series / I catalogue life dearly / Dreary how-tos on half-assed self-abuse.” She writes about kidding herself that she’s setting aside fecklessness and growing up, but also about how a rat looking at you wrong can undermine your (faked) confidence.
A one-woman band, Gish specialises in sing-songy insistence and is effectively sparing with moments of flair: the ascendant, trebly guitar that ends I’m Filled With Steak, and Cannot Dance evokes a glam-rock polyphonic ringtone. Sin Triangle weds ersatz exotica to a chorus that bursts the breezy reverie: “Two-faced bitches never lie / And therefore I never lie.” Scathing as she is about her shortcomings, she nurtures self-sympathy, too: “I’ve called Persephone by the name purse-a-phone,” she sings on Persephone, learning to embrace her failings: “I’ll mispronounce and mis-accent for eternity.” It feels callous to wish stress on such a charming songwriter, but roll on New Year’s Eve’s next panicked instalment.
