I’M GOING ON TOUR AGAIN!!!! Damsel in Distress tour tickets are on sale this Wednesday at 9am bst pic.twitter.com/b7craoehJy

— GIRLI (@GIRLImusic) June 21, 2021

“It’s gonna be raucous, high energy, wild and I’m so ready to see all my fans on the road!! – London-born singer added.
Girli will play in London’s historic Bush Hall on the 9th of July, to celebrate 20 years of the venue. Tickets are now sold out but you can join the waiting list here.
She will also perform at ALT+LDN at Clapham Common in August alongside Architects and Machine Gun Kelly. More info about this show, full line up and tickets, you can find here.
Girli recently released a single “More Than A Friend” that was featured in BBC Music Introducing back in May. She called the song personal: “I wrote this song about crushing hard on a girl who didn’t want me back”. She explained: “It’s about the sexual frustration of wanting someone so bad but knowing they just don’t like you like that”. The music video for the song was co-directed by the singer herself and you can watch it below.

See the full list of dates below. Tickets go on sale on Wednesday 23rd June and will be available here.
07/11/21 – The Lanes – Bristol
10/11 – Boileroom – Guildford
11/11 – The Wedgewood Roms – Portsmouth
15/11 – Tunbridge Wells Forum – Streatham Wells
16/11 – The Hope & Ruin – Brighton
17/11 – The Dome – London
21/11 – The Castle & Falcon – Birmingham
22/11 – O2 Academy – Leicester
24/11 – O2 Academy – Sheffield
25/11 – Cluny – Newcastle upon Tyne
28/11 – The Sound House – Dublin – Ireland
01/12 – The Key Club -Leeds
02/12 – Night People – Manchester
03/12 – Arts Club – Liverpool

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The tracks are anthems in their own right, with GIRLI showing off her genre eclectic explorations – from bubblegum pop, punk to rap. The EP opens with fierce-pop banger ‘Has Been’. GIRLI’s raw vocals combined with the ‘punch in the air’ backing which is reminiscent of Dream Wife’s ‘Hey Heartbreaker’ and Riot Grrrl bands such as Bikini Kill. ‘I’ll do me / so you do you’, which GIRLI sings sums up the tracks overall message.

‘Passive Agressive’ is similarly a track with a Riot Grrrl feel to it, centred on ‘anyone who has talked about you behind your back then been nice to your face’. A narrative that too many have experience, GIRLI asks why this has to happen with a grunge-pop beat and infectious chorus ‘that is impossible not to shout and dance around the room to.’

‘Letter to my Ex’ dropped last year and was named an ‘anti-pop bop’. Opening with ‘I feel so f***ing sad / I feel so f***ing free / I feel so good now you’re not the one who’s f***ing me’, already invokes a sense of closure with chaotic instrumental leaving one feeling – as GIRLI puts it – “angry or sad or happy or sexy or all of it”.

‘What A Shame!’ offers a new side of GIRLI from the previous tracks. The track follows a more melodic rock theme with the chorus harbouring vivid electro-synths. GIRLI’s message essentially speaks to seeing someone date someone that changes them and they realise it too late. What a shame. She conjures the images singing, ‘You play the fool so then he can be king / It’s a tragedy /Oh, what a shame, shame, shame, shame’. In typical GIRLI fashion, the emotional vulnerability combined with ironic imagery creates a raw and relatable track.

The final track on the EP differs completely to the usual grunge-pop beat GIRLI masters. The slower ballad strips away the usual chaotic beat behind GIRLI’s vocals, allowing the listener to hear the raw, emotional lyrics of GIRLI’s experiences with heartbreak and relationships. The honesty of GIRLI’s vulnerability as the end of the EP shows the range of emotions experienced when going through heartbreak – anger, not caring and empowerment to confusion and vulnerability.

The honesty throughout ‘Ex Talk’ and range of emotions invoked shows GIRLI’s ability to master relatable lyricism with either an up-beat bop or slower, melodic ballad. GIRLI has a podcast called GIRLI IRL, where she speaks to other artists about their experiences with feminism, queerness and relationships. Guests include Ella Grace Denton and Nadya from Pussy Riot. The promise of ‘more to come‘ and this being a ‘new era for GIRLI’ only excites existing fans and new comers in to what experiences the artist will spin in to relatable anthems next.

Known for her raw and honest lyrics, GIRLI’s single ’Passive Aggressive’ is centred around when someone is talking about you behind your back. In her own Instagram caption, the punky-pop star stated, ‘this song is about people talking about you behind your back then smiling to your face, whispers at parties & dirty looks when you walk in the room, being paranoid no one likes you & the anxiety taking over. and it’s about saying WHY YOU GOTTA BE SO DAMN PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE??’

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And the track encapsulates this feeling pretty much perfectly. Lyrics such as ‘When my best friend told my other best friend / The other best friend don’t wanna be friends no more / Now I’m stuck in a spider’s web’ conjures up memories of the days when everyone talked about everyone and you somehow got caught in the middle of it all. With a grunge-pop beat, the tracks chorus is infectious, impossible not to shout and dance around the room too.  

GIRLI, self described as ‘the pink-hair girl who writes songs’, just oozes cool – speaking out about issues, racism, feminism and sexuality and she is not afraid of offending those that have wronged her. Her 2020 track, ‘Has Been‘, was written about her record label that dropped her, her ex and the whole music industry itself – ‘This song is for the whole music industry who treat women like they have a sell-by date”’. She was a Young MP for Camden, speaking in parliament about worker’s rights. She headlined NME’s ‘Girls to the Front’ concert series in 2019, previously headlined by acts such as Dream Wife, The Japanese House and Black Honey. The free event supports female and non-binary artists. She has a substantial and dedicated fan base, now named as ‘pinkies’ helped by her upkeep with Instagram live shows and entertainment during the pandemic. Fans can also upload their own fan zine to be featured on GIRLI’s website.       

 

 

 

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Even her stage name, GIRLI, is cool when she explains her reasonings. She stated, “When you hear the word ‘girly’, you think of the colour pink and it’s really feminine and that means weak and that means kind of dainty, cute and quiet. I wanted to subvert that. The music is loud and it’s political – I just wanted to subvert what ‘girly’ means because I don’t think the adjective ‘girly’ is a negative thing. I think it is f**king awesome.”  If you are looking for honest, catchy and riot grrl music to listen to whilst the world is up in flames, GIRLI is definitely an artist that provides.