The station’s surprise support capped a ‘transformative’ few years in which Kate Tempest’s former drummer overcame binge-drinking and found her voice
Georgia’s second album should have been out by now: the DIY pop producer was meant to release Seeking Thrills through the indie label Domino last May. But in January, Radio 1 added the single Started Out to its C-list. Then its B-list. Then its A-list. This should not be surprising: it is fantastic, a limber bass workout indebted to the house godfather Larry Heard, made more addictive by the sweet insistence of Georgia’s voice. But no Domino act had been playlisted at the station since Arctic Monkeys. And DIY hits (especially by female producers) are not exactly fixtures on daytime radio.
It happened again a few months later with About Work the Dancefloor, a song as indebted to Tegan and Sara as the techno futurists Cybotron, indicating it was no fluke: Annie Mac, who championed Georgia at Radio 1, hails her “brilliant, brilliant songwriting and production in a world of identikit pop-dance records”. So she pushed the album back to January 2020 to let momentum build. “A lot of artists would probably find it quite frustrating, but I’m always writing new
music, so I was like, yeah!” says the curly-haired 29-year-old, born Georgia Barnes. The album is worth the wait: playful and empathic pop that wears its club smarts as convincingly as Robyn does.