George Pringle (real name Georgina Richards-Pringle) doesn’t really want to be a rockstar. After the release of her debut EP in 2008, she was asked by an interviewer whether she thought she might be ‘the next big thing’. Pringle’s answer was about as circumspect as it could have been: “I’m always going to be somewhere in the sidelines, spying on everyone.”
It’s true that Pringle’s music – a genre-bending combination of spoken-word poetry and electronica – lacks mass-market appeal, but there’s something deeply intriguing about it nonetheless. Starting out in a more conventional singer-songwriter mould, Pringle relinquished her guitar in favour of GarageBand, constructing elaborate digital soundscapes to accompany her stream-of-consciousness songwriting. In September, she self-released her first album, Salon des Refusés, an unpredictable collection of wryly-wrought stories and memories.
Salon de Refusés is carried along by the sense of an alluringly incomplete patchwork of narratives and half-formed thoughts. Pringle’s cut-glass RP accent is quietly reassuring, like a newsreader on a television you’re not really watching, and her writing style blurs the line between the surreal and the mundane. These songs are by turns confessional and defensive, and at times it’s a struggle to discern whether she’s addressing you, herself or someone else altogether.
“Carte Postale” wanders idly from hedonism to depression to frustration at Street Fighter, while “We Could Have Been Heroes” channels the nostalgia of an entire generation of fin-de-siècle middle-class youth (bands edged into corners near conservatories and sweating walls / broken doors, smashed glasses and legs lined up on sofas / boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl…) All the while, syncopated drum-loops flicker in and out alongside droning electronics, and the whole effect is entirely enthralling. Pringle sounds like nothing else around today, and that makes her incredibly special. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to convert.
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Marcus Kernohan is the founder and editor-in-chief of Stereokill.net. Email him at 
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