‘Albertine’ is an affectionate piece of baroque pop from accomplished singer and songwriter Grace McLean. Nuanced songwriting and experimental tendencies collide to present a music veteran in a brand-new light that showcases her taste for industrial, abrasive grit, in the gentlest of ways.
Grace McLean is a singer, songwriter, and composer based in New York. A writer in residence at the Lincoln Center Theatre, her first original musical was recently released to wide acclaim, and she also recently received awards for best scores from the Brooklyn Film Festival and the Athens International Film Festival. She is not a stranger to bright spotlights, or to wide-reaching critical praise, so naturally, her recent contract with Meridian/ECR was an ample opportunity for McLean to flex some muscles and is precisely what she does on Albertine.
A perfect interplay between McLean’s soft-but-present croons mixed with a little low, and dense rhythm section that slowly heaves until an explosion in the song’s last quarter, during which McLean’s croons remain poised and elegant, but go increasingly frantic and dispossessed. The intricate mix is just beautiful. The snare rim fills the space quite nicely, and the interweaving layers of vocal harmonies and ethereal strings create a lush tapestry, abetting the build-up to the destructive crescendo which features bone-shattering drums and an earth-shaking distorted bass line.
Mixed by stars, ‘Albertine’ comes as a single from McLean’s upcoming studio album My Lovely Enemy and is mixed by Jack DaBoe and mastered by Blake Morgan, who has worked with Tyler, The Creator, and Lenny Kravitz, respectively. Grace McLean, a renowned Broadway performer, champions a musical style on ‘Albertine’ that is akin to St. Vincent’s heavily emotionally visceral songwriting, with St. Vincent’s electronic tinge eased, to be replaced with a potent dose of experimental rhythms and industrial dirt.