Shygirl Rises to the Rave Occasion with “Mantra”

As the album rollout for Swallow! cracks on, Shygirl keeps proving that no one else has studied 90s sonic landscapes more diligently than her and her producer, Karma Kid. It began with “Alyse,” awash in The Prodigy beats, and continued with “Lucky (Hymn),” which veers more toward Sneaker Pimps and Massive Attack territory (with just a pinch of American Life-era Madonna thrown in for good measure). And now, with her third single from the album, “Mantra,” an anthem of self-confidence and self-love, Shygirl keeps leaning into those “sound mood boards” while also incorporating a hint of the still-underrated trip hop group that is Olive. Specifically, it’s their main hit, “You’re Not Alone,” that one can detect here, with “Mantra” being a song that’s also bursting with the same kind of hope and encouragement.

Before Shygirl gets to “the meat” of that encouragement, however, she brings us back to the cinematic universe that was first established in “Alyse.” And since she already gave Kay a second video that was all about him with “Lucky (Hymn),” it’s only fair to do the same for Saskia (Gala Chambers), who, in her unwitting way, sets off the chain of events that leads Kay (Samson Hughes) to be kidnapped by her father’s henchmen and then tied to a chair and tortured (the latter occurring during the “Lucky [Hymn]” video). However, director Austen Taylor Pease is sure to mention via a title card at the beginning of the “Mantra” video that the events the viewer is about see take place are “Before Alyse and Lucky (Hymn).” This flashed onscreen as Saskia stares out at the car-filled highway down below while perched on a bridge.

Her trio of gregarious (and presumably tipsy) friends interrupt her reflective mood by calling out to her and insisting that they keep the night going. Saskia, clearly not on their wavelength, tries to tell them, “No guys, I want to fucking get home” and “I’m really tired,” but they keep urging her to stay out. Incidentally, considering that the viewer knows what Saskia’s house looks like from the “Alyse” video, they can understand why she would prefer to go there.

As they start to walk down the bridge, with Saskia being pulled into the current (so to speak), Shygirl appears out of nowhere, almost like a specter of the night, to ask, “Do you guys have a lighter?” The friend she has with her (played by Vega) then inquires as to where Saskia is going. When she tries to say “home” again, even Shygirl fucks up her plans by countering, “We’re goin’ to this party over here, you need to come with us.” At that moment, a quintessentially “laddish” Brit (played by none other than Shygirl’s boyfriend, George Smale) infects the feminine space with his boorishness and shitty so-called sense of humor. Turns out, he, too, is going to this party. Though that doesn’t stop Shygirl and co. from going anyway since, obviously, it must be the kind of space that’s welcoming and open to all.

Saskia, cajoled against her will to keep her night going, is then dragged across the bridge in a moment that feels like a Sliding Doors one: she might have lived an entirely different life if she had just gone home. Of course, it doesn’t come across all that seriously when the outdoor rave they go to turns out to be nothing more than a good time. Nothing “earth-shattering,” as they say (like, it doesn’t seem as if she met Kay that night, you know?). At the same time, maybe it actually is earth-shattering to have a good time in the present climate (figuratively and literally). And to have someone like Shygirl remind, “Wanna live a little, wanna lose the day/I know what I want from me” is an important energy to put out into the universe at this point in time, when there is so much suppression and oppression.

With that in mind, Shygirl also adds, with plenty of Ultra Naté-inspired panache, “You can’t tell me what to do/How to live, nothing to lose/Free is where you find me.” Which is why you’ll find her out in the middle of nowhere at a rave in the “Mantra” video. Because maybe the last and only place to feel uninhibited and free is in a setting like this. One in which all walks of life are shown (including, naturally, someone wearing an “I ‘Heart’ DILFs” shirt) as Shygirl sings the vibration-changing chorus, “Rise and rise and rise and rise and rise/Go higher, higher, higher/When I align.” In a sense, that’s the kind of thinking that, well, aligns with MARINA’s on Princess of Power’s “Rollercoaster,” during which she sings, “Baby, I’ve been down, I’ve been down so low/But the more I love myself, the higher up I wanna go, oh.”

As for Shygirl, her own personal mantra that stands out most among the lyrics is, “And I am, and I can/And I do, and I’m real/And I touch, and I cry/And I love what I feel/And I want, and I need/And I take, to receive.” At this point in the video, however, it doesn’t look as if Saskia is “receiving” much out of the rave anymore, perhaps still wishing she had just gone with her initial instinct to go home. But that’s also the instant when Shygirl homes in on her again, remarking to her friend that it’s “the girl from earlier” (even though it was already quite late when it was “earlier”). So it is that they once again go “rescue” her, essentially, from her own “not into it” mood, with Saskia mentioning anew that, “I just wanna go home” (surely, she must be a Taurus).

But when she allows herself to get lost in the music and the crowd again with Shygirl, Saskia can be seen having a good time once more. Almost as if Shygirl and Pease’s statement with the video is that, yes, it’s easy to give in to wanting to be isolated and in a “down”/“over it” sort of mindset. But that if one pushes through it to go out and “be social,” there’s a sense of discovery and community that can be unearthed in ways that can’t at home (unless your home happens to be an abandoned warehouse where a rave might be hosted). Of course, try telling that to a misanthrope who just wants to watch her goddamn stories and not be bothered.