Grace Ives : Girlfriend Review

by Shannon Smith

Grace Ives has spent the past several years turning archetypal formats like the nursery rhyme, the ringtone, and the nine-to-five into a repertoire of oblique pop standards. Her 2022 breakthrough, Janky Star, captured the raw, youthful excitement of a newcomer, praised by critics for its experimental edge. Three years later, Girlfriend arrives as a more confident, cohesive statement. As Ives herself put it, looking back on the earlier record: “I was a baby.”

The album’s cumulative effect is of belting to the radio in your car, a high-drama pop monument to trying, flopping, and trying even harder next time. Working with longtime collaborators Ariel Rechtshaid and John DeBold, with mixing by Dave Fridmann, Ives leans into the vaudevillian charm of her early work while making the minuscule feel major: pump organs and glockenspiels channeling a disheveled cool into a tragicomic trainwreck.

The opening track, “Now I’m,” sets the stage with a 6/8 feel that moves from light synths and drums into a more polished sound setting with acoustic guitar figures. Ives’ vocals enter warm, augmented by doubling and harmonies, a gesture of transition that glimpses the fuller production and multi-layered vocal textures to come. This flows into “Avalanche,” where the sound shifts decisively away from bedroom pop. A big, full bass synth and bass drum with snare on two and four open the track, swirling synth fills are energetic and moving. The dynamic range is wide, with each instrument living in a clear setting. Layers never stop as each time through a section, more textures and synths are added, building an emissive arc across a full soundstage.

Dave Fridmann’s mixing signature is evident throughout: wide stereo imaging, characteristic low-end treatment, and a dynamic range that differs markedly from typical bedroom pop. This is a combination of polish and architecture. The album is available in 24-bit/96kHz on Bandcamp, a detail that speaks to the care taken in the mastering process.

The production team deserves credit for helping Ives navigate her own growth. In interviews, Ives described working with Rechtshaid as initially “humiliating,” she’s 5’2″ to his 6’4″, and sitting on the same couch “looking each other in the eye and talking shop” required putting aside her fan-girling side. But she learned to “speak his musical language fluently.” Even when she thought she had a song cracked, she says it sounded like “bad Sabrina Carpenter” before Rechtshaid helped refine it from the control room. This collaborative friction is audible in the final product: the tension between Ives’ raw instincts and Rechtshaid’s surgical precision creates the album’s distinctive push-pull energy.

“My Mans” demonstrates Ives’ structural development. The track opens with low-fi-sounding instruments in the first verse, establishing vulnerability. At 45 seconds, the synth bass enters, and the backing instruments move from low-fi to hi-fi; the soundstage widens, and the full production space unfolds. Ives’ vocals are doubled and harmonized, backing vocals adding color and depth. The drums remain low in the mix at first, then they become more prominent. Effects and samples interact beautifully with the vocal. Those vocals are supported by synths and added string sounds that expand again through the song. Then later, the hi-hat and bass drums become more pronounced with a nice skip-beat pattern, added conga sounds in the lower mix, and suddenly the feel is released, the soundstage returns to low-fi, with an out-of-tune piano playing the melody, completing the arc.

This structural instability of low-fi to hi-fi to low-fi mirrors the album’s central theme of trying, flopping, and trying again. The violins, backing harmonies, and grand-piano power chords in the chorus will get your attention. “Every single guy I meet completes me / I need a lover who can love me back,” she wails, before simplifying: “Anything to know I’m alive.”

The album’s sequencing reinforces this narrative. The first three tracks, ”Now I’m,” “Avalanche,” and “Fire 2,” establish the energy, leaving low-fi behind. Tracks 4-7, moving from ”Drink Up” through “Neither You Nor I,” represent peak theatricality, with “Dance With Me” and “Trouble” pushing the emotional envelope. Tracks 8-11, with the finale “Stupid Bitches,” move toward resolution and defiance. This sequencing is a deliberate arc from uncertainty to self-assertion.

On “Stupid Bitches,” the punchy finale, the muscular alto texture isn’t just natural timbre; it’s achieved through specific effect stacks that change dynamically. The track opens with fun stereo panning in the synths set to a big backbeat. The first verse has Ives’ vocals colored with a slight effect chain, noticeable but not dominant. Transitioning to the chorus, the synths wobble, and the groove becomes more active. The second time through, the drums shift sonic textures, becoming more raw; synths and samples enter and grow. The vocals are more polished, with added doublings and harmonies.

The bridge section segues the feel with backward vocals and samples signaling a hip dance-floor style synth pattern. “Doesn’t hurt me anymore” has a defined effects stack, but Ives’ vocal character still rings through. That phrase is answered with an effected wordless vocal line that descends with a full effect chain, creating interesting textures. In her snarled “Stupid bitches can’t hurt me,” there is a time-honored feminine resilience heard in her confidence.

Ives has described a “90s-sheathed pop aesthetic” on Girlfriend, and it’s audible throughout. “Garden” exemplifies this with thick, layered vocal textures adding a pad over a steady dance-pop groove. The building of all the vocal textures develops like the 90s pop aesthetic. Of note is how the production and treatment of instrument sounds and the effect chain on Ives’ vocals are important elements of each song’s development. Each section has subtle variations; many times, the second time through the form, the vocals take on a whole new effect stack, as in “Garden.” All the tracks follow this pattern. This technique of changing the vocal treatment on repeats creates a sense of movement even within static song structures, a hallmark of 90s production that feels fresh in 2026.

Ives told Vogue recently that “the old me might have cringed a bit” at her no-bullshit belt on “My Mans.” She gets it, nihilism and irony have dominated the Great American Vibe since the late 2010s, paving the way for plenty of shitpost-y electro-pop along the way. But somewhere between the clowning renaissance and the Quad God, something shifted: the not-so-humble tryhard, long considered shameful and annoying, has stepped up and inherited the earth. “I just let it be embarrassing,” Ives resolves on “Stupid Bitches,” sounding like the voice of her generation.

The last 30 seconds of “Stupid Bitches” feature more aggressive dance-floor vibes and interesting use of vocal effects. This signals a solid direction for Ives: moving to a more dance-floor-ready sound, more energy, and defined drops that are catchy.

Sincerity never sounds saccharine in Ives’ hands. Life scrapes you up no matter how hard you go at it, so you may as well commit to the bit. Girlfriend synthesizes the sensation of abandon with remarkable clarity, a testament to Ives’ top-to-bottom skillset. She hasn’t just outgrown the ever-diminutive moniker of “bedroom pop”; she’s writing music now.