Shygirl’s Nymph Tour is Dripping with Glitter and Ecstasy

Last Friday in Manchester’s cavernous Wesleyan chapel Albert Hall, Shygirl emerged on stage clad in sinewy black mesh and hung over the crowd like hot smoke. Refracted up into the mirrored backdrop that slants over her set, it was easy to mark the hold she had over her crowd from the second they saw her, and even easier to tell she was well aware of this. The allure of Shygirl’s music is, after all, its unabashed sexual dominance, and to hear her hedonistic psalms straight from their scribe was a blessing to say the least. Seeing her live, it’s all too clear that Shygirl is everything she sells herself as.

In turns the ethereal and airy nymph, the insatiable gyrating nymphomaniac and the priest of the otherworldly nymphaeum, Shygirl’s debut was wound from a thousand strands of fibreoptic cobweb and offered a thousand threads to tie herself to the audience with. With Nymph’s shimmery hyperpop and trap cuts offering respite from the filthy bass lines of older ALIAS tracks, her discography offered the perfect balance of emotions, all executed to the nth degree, all electric and razor sharp. Opening track “Woe” offered a beat switch from crackling, dream-like surrealism to heavier deconstructed trap that set the tone for the gig. Pumping the room with energy whilst equally plucking at the audience’s heartstrings, Shygirl sowed the tension that wouldn’t be released until her hardest tracks would come in later for the kill shot. In the meantime, she took her time to tease the audience with cold glares and knowing smiles slid between stunning technicolour visuals and the occasional glance at herself in the giant mirror behind her. The mirror, hanging at an angle over the musician throughout the set and reflecting both her and the visual accompaniments shot onto the stage below her, became the perfect prop. Against a mirror, Shygirl’s performance for the audience was only an act, with the real performance being for herself. It added something voyeuristic to the concert, this sense of the bad Shygirl performing in front of us and the good Shygirl trapped behind the glass, suspended from above and put on display whilst her alter ego played with the crowd before her.

As the set moved forward, the hardcore tracks began to bleed in and “SLIME”, “FREAK” and “Cleo” visibly brought the performer into her final form. With her Playboy-style chrome emblem spinning erratically on the floor below and the mirror above, a strobe blanching all but her cloaked figure and its reflection, and the crowd gradually warming up to the indulgently sycophantic dynamic Shygirl had created, the room was alight. The encore finished with the behemoth of a track that is “BDE”. The Lord’s Prayer of Shygirl’s discography, the song made the sexual chops of the rest pale in comparison, laying hypnotic demands to “beat this pussy right” over uncomfortably racy bass laced thick with sonic artifacts, moans and whining synths. Shygirl hit every word but couldn’t keep herself from smiling upon hearing her lyrics screamed in queer euphoria, filling the chapel with noise.

Image Credits: Kyle Galloway

The success of music like this in a concert setting, music that is queer both in substance and audience, and music that pulls so heavily on textures typical of hyperpop, could be a testament to the microgenre’s persistence and versatility. Furthermore, a set like this cements Shygirl as one of the artists most authentically uniting avante garde electronic music with cohesive and captivating live settings. Ultimately, the experience received as a result of this union forecasts potential for Shygirl to take her music and performances to further, sweatier and sluttier places with each new release.