‘Farm Fatale’ Review: horsegiirL Gallops On

What comes to mind when you hear the term “horse girl”? Probably tall boots, neatly braided hair, graphic tees, and a carefree facade. Certainly not a horse-turned-DJ heading a room full of sweaty, dancing partygoers and fist-pumping tattooed arms.

Affiliated with the Berlin-based label and artist collective Live From Earth — a techno label that embraces experiments with hardcore, trance, and other genres — horsegiirL is a project that clearly started as a bit and then committed to it. The DJ and electronic artist plays all her sets in a giant horse mask that fully covers her head and neck — an outstanding feat when you consider the temperature of the rooms she plays in and the mask’s poor ventilation. She calls all her fans “Farmies” and claims, quite simply, to be a horse named Stella with some very human problems. horsegiirL’s song lyrics parody the tropes of pop and rap lyrics about love and sex: “I graze the range land on my own / and in the barn I'm all alone / This farm no longer is my home / Since you been gone since you been gone,” she sings in the chorus of “Harvest Heartbreak,” one of her more recent singles. “My barn / my rules / my toys / my tools,” she sings in the refrain of “My Barn, My Rules,” off her first EP. horsegiirL’s aesthetic is pure kitsch: stylized script font and excessive emojis feature in her Instagram captions; vibrant colors and sparkly graphic effects accentuate her pictures. Little information is available online about horsegiirL, not even her real name.

Her story, it seems, is the one she’s written for herself.

horsegiirL released her first EP, “Farm Fantasies” — a collaborative project with MCR-T, her labelmate on Live From Earth — roughly a year ago. Since then, she’s garnered over 75,000 listeners on streaming platforms. Despite its whimsy, her music isn’t just good because her act is a funny concept. Yes, you might be listening to a DJ with a horse head mix an original track about jealousy for her farmer’s new horse and how she misses eating carrots — but that’s only the gimmick. The music itself is undeniably catchy and danceable.

What makes horsegiirL stand out as a musician is her position at the intersection of techno and hyperpop. A seemingly niche act, horsegiirL embodies a transatlantic combination of the current moment’s musical sensibilities. The 2020s have seen the growing popularity, mostly in the Americas, of hyperpop — whimsical, maximalist, heavily-autotuned pop-electronic music — with the rise of artists like 100 gecs, Charli XCX, Arca, and SOPHIE. Meanwhile, techno — fast, repetitive electronic dance music favored in Europe (though it originated in Detroit) — has evolved to embrace crossover from genres such as hardcore and trance but remained distanced from pop’s emphasis on lyric storytelling and saccharine aesthetics.

On “Farm Fatale,” released on Feb. 24, horsegiirL combines these genres, layering airy, bubbly vocals over a fast, repetitive beat, with a mixture of harsh and melodic sounds. “Farm Fatale” is her first solo EP, strengthening her footing as an electronic musician and producer.

The most disappointing thing about the EP is that there isn’t more of it: With only three songs totalling just over six minutes, it didn’t deliver the the solid wave of new horsegiirL beats fans have been eagerly awaiting. The first two songs are enjoyable listens, but not as exciting as her work on “Farm Fantasies.” The high-energy brevity of “Green Grass (Intro)” could be used to make her already fast-paced DJ sets feel even faster. “Saddle” intersperses bird noises with a bouncy reverb.

However, the obvious highlight is the final and longest song; At a 2:32 playtime, “Praise the Farm,” shapes horsegiirL’s persona into horse-turned-outlaw in the style of old crime movies. “Praise the Farm” was released ahead of the EP as a single, the cover of which depicts horsegiirL leaning out of a crookedly parked car, clutching a purse, and pointing out of the frame, floodlights rendering only her blown out silhouette and the dramatic shadow of her horse mask visible.

On “Green Grass (Intro)” and “Saddle,” horsegiirL’s riffs about living on a farm and being a horse start to feel like generic filler. This is fine; nobody expects the lyrics over a solid techno beat to be particularly remarkable — that’s part of what makes the parodic element of horsegiirL’s lyrics regularly so amusing. But while something seems missing in “Green Grass (Intro)” and “Saddle,” “Praise the Farm” reinvigorates the intensely-focused, whimsical play of her past songs, carrying the EP across the finish line. horsegiirL sings about rebelling from a well-intentioned upbringing for material gain: “I praise the farm / then break the stall / a good ass horse / but bad ass thoughts / I know my mama raised me to be better than this / I gotta get this paper you know I'll never miss.” Of all the songs on the EP, “Praise the Farm” has the heaviest, steadiest beat. The sirens in the background of the intro give way to a galloping momentum that makes it impossible not to dance.

Though “Farm Fatale” doesn’t feel as consistent as one might hope, it’s a solid first solo EP that ends with a bang.

— Staff writer Marie A. Ungar can be reached at marie.ungar@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @mreeeungr.