Miss Grit - Follow The Cyborg (LP) - Smokey Marble Grey Vinyl

Miss Grit’s debut full‑length, Follow the Cyborg, arrived in February 2023 on Mute Records, and it feels like the moment Margaret Sohn’s meticulous bedroom experiments snapped into a vivid, cinematic whole. It is a tight, modern art pop record that treats guitars and synths like interchangeable limbs, and it chases the old sci‑fi question of what makes a person a person without ever slipping into lecture mode. You hear the theory in the scaffolding, but the songs still sweat and spark.

Sohn had already sketched out a voice on the Talk Talk and Impostor EPs, but this set moves with a cooler confidence. The title track lays down the thesis right away, a slippery pulse that lets their voice hover in a half‑human register, gently processed and oddly tender. The hook is simple and sticky, the perspective is skewed in a way that feels intimate rather than alien. A lot of artists sing about transformation. Miss Grit decided to stage it in real time, toggling between serrated guitar figures and glassy pads like they are switching operating systems.

“Like You” is one of the record’s most immediate moments, a sly study in mimicry that keeps pulling the floor out from under its own chorus. “Nothing’s Wrong” rides a clipped beat and a dry bass thrum, then blooms into a sudden, burning guitar line that says more than any lyrical confession could. “Lain (phone clone)” tips its hat to Serial Experiments Lain, and the nod is more than a name check. The production folds the voice into the circuitry, blurring the boundary between narrator and network. “Perfect Blue” pulls another thread from cult cinema, but it lands on something either deeply personal or perfectly uncanny, depending on how you tilt your head.

The sound world is razor neat, but there is always a stray wire showing. You can feel careful editing in the airless drum programming and the way synths slot into place, yet the guitars crackle with little flecks of grit. Sohn sings in a notably controlled way, syllables placed with the care of someone who also thinks in signal flow, then lets small imperfections do the humanizing. It is the best kind of concept album, where the engineering serves the feeling. Even the quietest songs carry a low hum of tension, like a machine left on overnight.

There is plenty to read into here. Interviews have pointed to the influence of Donna Haraway’s ideas, and you can hear that cyborg-as-liberation lens shaping the record’s point of view. The lyrics keep circling autonomy, performance, and the ways technology can shield or sharpen a self. None of that would matter much if the choruses did not land. They do. It is easy to imagine these tracks sneaking onto playlists next to St. Vincent or Mitski, not because they sound the same, but because they share a knack for building hooks from angles that should not fit together.

Reception backed that up. The indie press greeted Follow the Cyborg with real enthusiasm, and the singles rolled out with the kind of buzz that makes you refresh tour pages. Mute was a smart home for it too, given the label’s history with artists who make machines feel emotional. If you are the type who shops with your ears, find a copy of Follow the Cyborg vinyl and let side A do the convincing. The low end sits nicely, the textures have room, and those clipped vocals cut through just right.

For crate diggers, this is a no‑brainer. Miss Grit vinyl does not linger long in the racks where I live, and the sleeve art looks sharp in a stack. If you need to buy Miss Grit records online, you will find plenty of shops stocking it, and it pairs well with other Miss Grit albums on vinyl if you have the earlier EPs in your collection. I first clocked it in a Melbourne record store while flipping through new arrivals, and it has since become one of those albums I recommend to anyone hunting modern art pop that actually moves. Even readers browsing for vinyl records Australia wide will have good luck tracking it down thanks to Mute’s solid distribution.

Follow the Cyborg is compact, clever, and welcoming. It rewards a thinker’s attention, but it plays just as well on a late bus ride with the city lights flickering back at you. Put it on and see where the circuitry leads.