Mall Girl

"Off-kilter and warped in a way that’s delectably sweet" High Clouds
 

‘Bubbly Cool Drink’, the new single from Norwegian art-pop outfit Mall Girl, represents an exciting new chapter for the buzzed-about band. A string of infectious singles released in 2020, including ‘My Sweet Mall Girl’ and the fierce ‘Bad Girl’, cemented the bands reputation as an act to watch in the alt-pop arena. Now they are gearing up to release their debut album in Spring 2022, via Norwegian label Jansen Records. 
 
Members Iver Armand Tandsether, Hannah Veslemøy Narvesen, Eskild Myrvoll and Bethany Forseth-Reichberg were forced to get creative when the pandemic hit, side lining best-laid plans to flesh out some songs before heading into the studio together. 
 
"Because of COVID regulations and the four of us living in two different cities, we changed the way we worked with the songs quite radically in the months leading up to the studio recording,” Narvesen says. "We’ve always been very oriented towards the live performance of the songs, including when we compose them together in our rehearsal space. That way of working has led to some challenges when recording, as you end up listening to the songs in a different manner and might figure out you should have done everything differently."
 
While some put their creative endeavours on hold, Mall Girl opted to try something different. “We actually ended up ‘remote composing’ big parts of the album, with everyone working from their own home studio and bouncing ideas back and forth,” Narvesen explains. "This was a very welcome change of workflow for us, and it led to us writing some songs which probably wouldn’t have turned out that way had we been together in the same room."
 
This experimental shift in their creative process led to the creation of songs bursting with infectious hooks, hypnotizing grooves and punchy lyrics. Bringing all of the edginess of their previous releases, but through a slightly different lens. New single ‘Bubbly Cool Drink’ is one such song, bursting with pure math-pop brilliance. On the single, the band say: 
 
“It tastes sweet, it’s bubbly and it makes you forget your worries, but if you have too many bubbly cool drinks you’ll feel all out of balance by the end of the night. In your drunken haze you realise that you long for more than just drinks with miniature parasols, you actually want to be under a parasol on a beach, with an uncomplicated life and a wholesome relationship. Somehow your fantasy of better times is what’s keeping you afloat and maybe one day you’ll drink your bubbly cool drink in the Bahamas rather than a stingy bar somewhere in a rainy, cold town.”
 
‘Bubbly Cool Drink’, available to stream and download now, showcases the band’s fresh perspective and positions them as one of pop’s most intriguing new acts. Their debut album is scheduled to follow in Spring 2022 via Jansen Records.