Shygirl's SWALLOW! is a Show-Stopping Sophomore Record.

Shygirl released her sophomore album, SWALLOW! last Friday on November 6th. This album is an arresting follow up to her debut album Nymph, which was released in 2022. In an interview with Vera On Track on YouTube, she described her debut as a ‘...smorgasbord of my potential.’ The album represented the music she loved at the time and borrowed inspiration from all corners of her music taste. Shygirl said that the album plays more like a playlist than a record, what with all of the different influences that she injected into the project. However, the opposite was the case for SWALLOW!. For her second album, Shygirl went into the process of creating her album with intent to be cohesive, literal, and concise.

SWALLOW!'s Album Cover

The change in approaches to album-making, in this case, came from Shygirl falling in love. As she was creating this album, she was experiencing a new relationship, one that she’s still in and one where she feels completely understood for the first time. This love had a very visceral effect on her, she said. It demanded creativity. This love gave her a renewed sense of self, a very intimate one that is intrinsically tied to the other person: her partner. These feelings became the underlying message of SWALLOW!. ‘...it’s not about losing yourself in a relationship but being grateful for the person that [you] have become,’ she said later in the same interview with Vera On Track.

Love and desire are not new topics in Shygirl’s music by any means, but the way they’re sung about on SWALLOW! is different. Previously, Shygirl would rely on lust or desire as the main topics of her music, and when she would write a more vulnerable song about love or something else, she would hide the real emotion of it behind upbeat production. SWALLOW! deviates from this old M.O.; it’s no doubt Shygirl’s most vulnerable project to date. In an interview with The FADER, Shygirl talked about how honesty was so important for this album. Her goal with this project was accurately portraying her love for her partner and her feelings in their relationship, and how meaningful their connection is. This fact is so beautifully portrayed from the get-go. You can really tell how much intention Shygirl put into this album. The first track, Alyse, features her boyfriend’s voice. He’s the man singing at the end of the song. Also in the FADER interview, Shygirl said that the lyrics for Alyse began as a poem. It’s such an intimate thing to have someone read your work, let alone translate it into song, but the lyrical content takes this song even farther onto the next step of vulnerability. ‘And I was floating out / ‘Till I met you / ‘Till I found you,’ Shygirl harmonizes with her boyfriend. She asked him to sing this song only three months into their relationship which... Wow. Another one of my favorites, Real, is a close second to Alyse’s love-soaked lyrics. ‘Time is incomplete / Until you’re next to me / As if I didn’t exist before / Real.’ The song is a stunning and deeply personal piece of music about finding yourself through another person. In a way, it functions as the album’s thesis statement. I would recommend that song first to anybody hesitant about jumping into the full album.

Alyse's Single Cover

This feeling of love and belonging stands out across the whole record, and frequently, Shygirl relates these feelings to religion. One of the best examples of this is on the song Lucky [Hymn]. The name relates to religion already, but Shygirl furthers the symbolism with the lyrics, ‘And I prayed it to the gods, just to send him to me / I’m so lucky but I’m not, it’s the faith runnin’ through me.’ Her singing is punctuated with upbeat guitars, both acoustic and electric. It’s a song that you can tell will kill live. Another brilliant example of religion as a metaphor or conduit to discuss love is on my personal favorite track, Altar. ‘All I ever wanted / was to make you believe,’ Shygirl repeats throughout the song. Her voice echoes these words over a moody, looping electronic beat that is almost hypnotic.

On top of SWALLOW!’s newfound lyrical vulnerability, it’s instrumental sounds also differ from all of her previous work. When I was introduced to Shygirl in 2020, she existed pretty firmly within the genres of electronica, hyperpop, and electro-pop. On SWALLOW!, though, Shygirl experiments more with grungier sounds. ‘...on this record I really wanted to ... push the natural instrumentation,’ she said to Vera on Track. And oh my god, does she. A real highlight of this indie direction is the album’s penultimate track, Sublime. The song begins with acoustic guitar, and the beat morphs slowly until it turns into a stunning guitar solo. Shygirl’s voice carries the melody as the guitar tears on in the background. High speed drums break along in the background. It’s a stunning song unlike any song of Shygirl’s that I’ve ever heard.

It’s a really awesome feeling to have been waiting for an album for so long, to have such high expectations for it, and then to have those expectations completely obliterated.  I had no idea that Shygirl would be making an angsty, love-soaked, indietronica record as her sophomore album. That amazing surprise is part of why I love this album so much. The music I gravitate towards the most in my day-to-day life is the music the refuses to, or just simply can’t, fit itself into the strict borders of genre. When an artist I love evolves her sound, and her production style and songwriting evolve, I can’t help but be thrilled and excited. SWALLOW! is incredible, and I hope that everybody goes and gives it a serious listen after reading this. Alyse is easily one of the best songs of the year. You could make that case for any track off of this project, really.