King Princess – ‘Girl Violence’ album review: Certainly not a sound for sore ears
Looking back in the aftermath of a messy manipulation, it’s easy to see where you may have taken the wrong course with things. Although hindsight is miraculous, it can also be a curse, to the point where regrets can turn dark. Introspection is usually lauded as a gift, but for King Princess and her latest rock album Girl Violence, it is both a literal and metaphorical punch in the gut.
For the American singer, her third album in the space of six years could have merely represented something shrewd and fairly run of the mill in the constant working machine of the music industry. But these seemingly narrow timeframes have held some significant changes and challenges for King Princess – having split from Mark Ronson’s Zelig Records, she now finds herself as not only the singer but producer and creative pioneer of Girl Violence, which is set to be released on September 12th via Section1.
The most startling first hurdle is that the King Princess veneer is in the process of being somewhat stripped to reveal its true brains, Mikaela Straus. You only need the album’s blistering tenth track, ‘RIP KP’, to show you that in abundance. The theme of the record revolves around shedding one’s skin – from relationships, from cities, from major label contracts – but rather than a sleek process of rebirth, that scraping away of the outer shell is meant to evoke every ounce of pain.
As a notion, the idea of Girl Violence – both as a title and a concept – is brazen and exciting. “Nobody mentioned that girls can be violent,” Straus delicately sings in the album’s titular opening track. To this end, the whole thing is far from a comfortable listen. Harmonies clash, melodies jar, and the saturation of certain guitar riffs, particularly on the likes of ‘I Feel Pretty’ are turned up to the extreme until the speakers are about to burst. If anything, the name of that song is the exact opposite to your emotional state at that moment.
But despite its lack of palatability, it would be naive to class this as a criticism. The whole idea of violent rhetoric is that it’s meant to put you on edge and somewhat make your skin crawl, which Straus excels at throughout the record’s 13 tracks. To this end, you would expect the album to become more disturbing as it goes on, but where it ends up falling down is that this pulsating level of threat suddenly runs out of steam, and instead becomes little more than empty noise.
The same few tropes are used over and over again – a pop punk pace here, a grating harmony there, and a fair bit of autotune chucked in for good measure. In turn, it exposes something that starts out as truly electrifying as being a mere ruse; there’s no more tricks to pull out of the magic hat. For creating an album called Girl Violence, you need that sense of feminine aggression to blast itself all the way through, rather than just lose its thrill after the first couple of tracks.
Ideal listening experience: Anywhere but a dark alley.
For fans of: Pushing the boundaries of whatever femininity means.
A concluding comment from Charli XCX (naturally voiced in obnoxious autotune): “Wow, sympathy really is a knife.”
Release date: September 12th, 2025 | Producer: Mikaela Straus | Label: Section1
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out New Music Newsletter
All the latest New Music from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.