On paper, Seeking Thrills, the second album by London producer and vocalist Georgia Barnes, has all the makings of a very Veganuary sort of dance-pop album, one with an avocado half where a smiley face might once have been. Between her eponymous debut of 2015 and this second outing, the 29-year-old gave up alcohol, drugs, meat, coffee and gluten.
That list of exclusions – and how it might shape an exuberant, eclectic club-pop record such as this – codes differently, depending on your peer group. To hedonists who remember the saucer-eyed boom years, Georgia’s ascetic choices might set off some Moby alarm bells. (That period is not without resonance: Georgia is the daughter of Leftfield’s Neil Barnes, and their 1995 debut, Leftism, was made in the home studio also occupied by Georgia’s cot.)
To any millennial or Gen Z-er, however, there may be a perfectly understandable self-care strategy at work here, reflecting more planet-forward, cash-savvy times. Studies tell us that “having it large” has given way to “having it more bijou”, as hordes of young people eschew intoxicants and dance away the future-fear with one eye on their groupchat.
Whether that is true or not, Georgia’s second album packs a conscious contemporaneity, even as it lines up a squad of retro signifiers. Any concerns that it might not bang are not borne out – Seeking Thrills sounds full-fat, not free-from. Awash in euphoria blowbacks and pre-loved synth-pop, this is a record that proves the dynamics of a good time benefit from a clear mind.
Rhythms are key: Georgia used to be a session drummer, most notably for her friend Kate Tempest. Last June she played Glastonbury from inside a distinctive red hexagonal drumkit. The research for Seeking Thrills involved her taking deep dives into the annals of electro, Detroit techno and Chicago house, lending a lot of substance to these stylish offerings. “Deliciously Georgia” – in the sense of over-proscriptive and squeaky clean – this album is not.
Georgia’s biggest hit so far – About Work the Dancefloor – has been spinning since early last year but has lost none of its momentum, her limpid, lovelorn vocals orbiting somewhere above a pulsating Giorgio Moroder rhythm-rush. It’s still unclear what the chorus “I was just thinking about work the dancefloor” means. Is there a Chicago house track called Work the Dancefloor, so obscure it defies modern search engines? You’d like to think so.
Further down the tracklisting, another ersatz hiccup occurs. The Thrill (featuring Maurice) is another 80s-vintage tune boasting what sounds like an even older period sample. “Look now ladies, it’s the thrill!” intones a husky voice. It turns out that this Maurice is actually one of Georgia’s aliases and she is winking hard – “sampling” rather than sampling.
For all Georgia’s evident respect for club lore, however, this is, at heart, an album of pop rushes in the vein of Chvrches or Robyn. Much of Seeking Thrills gravitates towards the early 80s, where the developments of late 70s clubland ended up filtering into the charts.
Never Let You Go, which came out last year, has a particularly blithe one-finger synth melody, accompanied by a flurry of era signifiers, not least the echo on her yelps. The Chicago house-derived Started Out, meanwhile, was actually made on period analogue equipment: Roland’s TR-909 drum machine and SH-101 synth. The cover of the record captures a group of young women dancing in 1988, in an image by photographer Nancy Honey. Girls having fun is one of this record’s key plots.
While her 2015 debut established Georgia as a distinctive creative whose London chops drew on the capital’s rich loam of influences – Caribbean beats, brooding electronics, world music, grime and fellow west Londoner MIA – it did not propel her to stardom. Autonomous female artists still face an uphill struggle, even if they are the offspring of somebody or other and spent time both at the Brit School and the ethnomusicology department at Soas. Although you won’t know it from Seeking Thrills, Georgia plays the kora, while Cuban rhythms are an area of expertise; she was involved in the last Africa Express project.
There remain traces of the world pop of MIA or Santigold here, on Feel It and Ray Guns, the two strongest tracks on the second half of the record. Indeed, if Seeking Thrills has a weakness it is this constant echo of great music gone by. Overall, however, it represents a massive move forward for the producer, with enough emotional content and versatility to sustain the listener once the hooky five-track EP at the start fades. Honey Dripping Sky feels like the record’s soft underbelly, a throwback to less abstemious times: “Mistakes were made/ I wasn’t thinking straight.”
To complain that this album’s hedonistic payload is, perhaps, a little once removed – that it coasts on the fumes of wild nights past, while not inhaling – would be pointless. In Georgia’s hands, it all just makes for good times. You can, it turns out, jackfruit your body after all.
