Prima Queen cement their emerging status with The Prize

Having toured alongside indie favourites such as Wet Leg and Whitney, the transatlantic duo – Bristol-hailing Louise Macphail and Chicago native Kristin McFadden – use an enduring connection, a friendship formed as songwriting students, to anchor themes in flux, the pair’s shared encounters threading through songs as varying snapshots.

Channelling the likes of Weyes Blood and Naima Bock via the breezy west coast rock of EP Not the Baby, off the back of a slew of singles cutting certified pop with mellow ballads, Prima Queen avoid accusations of standing in a stylistic cul de sac. The Prize stands as a crystallisation of the outfit’s decade-long association in this sense, a creative partnership primed by tales of short-term and unfulfilled relationships; the two-piece's debut LP deriving much of its power from such personal histories running in parallel and in tangent, collectively drawing on the peaks and troughs of experiences from the distant and more recent past.

Macphail and McFadden chop and change tonally, mirroring the path of each song and its story; speaking to a specific chapter of the last ten years, devoid of schmalz and unapologetically honest. “Ugly” sees volatile guitar hooks pitted alongside a tale of fickle, ego-driven love interest and the illusory filter of nostalgia, recalling a relationship skipping between Glastonbury William’s Green stage and the urban backdrop of Canary Wharf: “Chew me up, spit me out / An accessory to your excessive lifestyle / Dress me up, put me down / I wish I didn’t feel so alive when you’re around.” The Joni Mitchell-namechecking “Mexico”, a reimagined early recording, harnesses big riffs for scale and a slowly unwinding melody, earning fan-favourite status during Prima Queen’s live shows.

A nu-disco front frames “Fool” before diving into straight-up pop-punk terrain, while detached Kim Gordon-esque vocals dot “Oats (Ain't Gonna Beg)”, dialling between grunge and alt rock. The twee indie pop of “Flying Ant Day” in its low-key dreamlike state sees shades of Feist looping through, as a similar melancholic acoustic drift dints “More Credit”, focusing on hindsight, regret, and the human tendency to sugarcoat history, dicing between bittersweet nostalgia and hard truth in frayed Phoebe Bridgers-fashioned Americana.

Prima Queen cement their emerging status with The Prize in a confident and unabashed manner, the self-awareness of reviewing the past through a forgiving lens, and a resignation to inaccuracy and flaws that finds expression in the final track’s closing refrains: “Maybe memories are better / I forget then I remember.”