G Flip’s Dream Ride will inevitably invite a lot—like, a lot—of comparisons to Chappell Roan, and it’s not difficult in the slightest to see why. Roan is, after all, the current queer-pop queenpin, exquisitely larger than life and with a nascent urge to dabble in country music. G Flip, meanwhile, is just as well-known as a drummer than as a singer (which qualifies as ‘larger than life’, right?), and has arguably been toying inside the country field for even longer. It’s just that, now, Dream Ride brings everything to its clearest head yet.
It’s also G Flip’s comfortable best album, continuing the trend of consistent, upward increments between each release. About Us began things as a ho-hum Halsey riff; DRUMMER picked up incalculably more personality to work with; now Dream Ride is pushing that all the further forward. If that weren’t the aim, Disco Cowgirl wouldn’t be the opener. You can feel the simultaneous heat and blustery of a rush of desert wind, on a song that sonically references The Killers, Bleachers and any number of pop girlies’ embrace of classic Americana. In sound, there’s that Antonoffian / Bhaskerian / Nigronian that’s a proven money-spinner these days. And that’s even before the whip-cracks, the trills of saxophone, the implacable walls of gang vocals, and the final, phenomenal key-change to crank all that up further and harder.
Truthfully, it’s a win-button that might’ve been burned through too early, because nothing else on Dream Ride matches up to what’s clearly G Flip at their most euphorically free. That’s not to say they won’t try, though, and still get commendably close. Following the opener, the three-pack of I Don’t Wanna Regret, In Another Life and Bed On Fire is caked in varying shades of gloss, unified by a similarly great ear for stratospheric, blown-out-at-the-seams alt-pop. Later, Big Ol’ Hammer is built like the enby version of Man! I Feel Like A Woman, between the buoyant, playful timbre (that’s pretty close to the original, all things considered) and the eternal jamminess baked into the very bases of its DNA. If the motorcycle rev at the start doesn’t get you going straight away, there may be something wrong.
However, unlike a certain Midwest princess whose pretty much got every corner of her musical map primed for stardom, G Flip still has areas to work on. They’re great at freewheeling bombast; that can’t be denied. Begin to de-centre that, though, and it can be…less so. The first signs come on Cut His Dick Off, magnetised entirely to that titular line and the crash of broken verisimilitude it leaves on a padded, generally gentle alt-pop song that’s supposed to be heartfelt and consoling. It’s the most disruptive example compared to what’s simply less appealing musically elsewhere. At least with the hyperactive rubberiness of Exactly What I Like or a stab at steamy power-balladry on Lush that’s comes off as more canned than it should, you can at least account for taste.
Furthermore, it’s a testament to G Flip’s artistic growth that Dream Ride is pleasantly free of any true shockers. That’s indicative of the climate of pop as a whole, actually, where an uptick in energy towards full album statements has taken root, and G Flip’s investment in that pays off. Narrative is thin on the ground (though I Don’t Wanna Regret’s writing carries a smidge of Sam Fender in where its details take it), but you’d be hard-pressed to call this shallow or low-effort, either. Considering the hell of a yell that G Flip has on them at the best of times, there’s never a worry of space not being filled when necessary. Healthy doses of reverb help while still being far from a crutch. If anything, it only powers further a voice that, on a song like Let’s Take This Show On The Road and its play for a hollowed, burnished alt-country sway, cuts strong and deep all on its own.
Bring it all together, then, and as mentioned earlier, it’s the best, most comprehensive statement that G Flip has made to date. If nothing else, it definitively removes them from the early-to-mid-2010s era of alt-pop that they always felt like a straggler in anyway, and deposits them among far more esteemed, modern competition. A steeper climb uphill, perhaps, but evidently, it’s not a challenge they can’t hack. Dream Ride embodies that all the way through—breadth is heavily emphasised, as is G Flip’s continued, measurable growth. The fact that a world tour is coming off the back of this album specifically isn’t shocking; it’s the most ‘world tour-ready’ of any G Flip release. In that case, it truly is a dream ride.
For fans of: Chappell Roan, Halsey, King Princess
‘Dream Ride’ by G Flip is released on 5th September on AWAL.
Words by Luke Nuttall
