- Oh look at me, out of the loop again - who is this Handsome person? Caitlin McGregor, aka Handsome (and who you may remember having performed as Caitlin Park), despite having been releasing EPs under the Handsome name back to 2018 (and, further back, two whole albums as Caitlin Park) and being really very popular if Insta is to be believed, well I only really clocked her because she’s good mates with a whole bunch of people I know and like. EGOISM, Lupa J, Hope D and a lot of other people are all part of her debut full-length, or as she styles it, the Handsome Gang.

Actually, the Handsome Gang has been going on as long as the Handsome moniker has. Park adopted her most recent stage name because it felt like a more comfortable fit (as opposed to being ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’); more like her. The gang part was because she wanted to offer that comfortable feeling, that easy-going safe space to the other musos when she was in band mode, but not just them. In fact, really, to as many people as possible.

That plan has, obviously, been executed in a really big way on the new record. Nearly every track sports at least one and sometimes several guests. The full title is Handsome Gang - Every Second We Try, which is a bit of a mouthful, but what Handsome is doing there is tipping her hat to her fellow artists and reminding folks just how much harder music is than most jobs. It’s certainly not something any muso needs to be reminded of and, yeah, every second you’ve got to be putting your all into -usually- multiple roles, otherwise forget about it. Just let the next bunch of green teens with stars in their eyes take over; and they’re happy to be paid in recognition, you know?

I feel like there’s a lot of hip hop records on the theme of doing the hard yards, coming up against the odds, but this record -for the most part- isn’t hip hop, rather many different shades and stripes of electro-pop. More in line with that genre, it’s not about how hard the music game is, but -ah- the game of love. Right from the get-go, opener Dumb It Down features Handsome and friends Chloe Dadd and one of my favourite pop-duos EGOISM, collectively losing their **** about love: “Do you see me now? / We’re interlocked / I don’t suppose you give a fuck / Do hear me now?/ Is this too much? / You’re exactly what I shouldn’t do.” Then, immediately they find it again: “What if I told you my mind ain’t like that / Can’t always compute when your signals so flat / I want to complete you but my heart is like a bloodbath / Fighting to keep up, keep me on the right path / You got me / You got me on the right path / The right path, not a bloodbath.” It sort of sounds like a manual for love in our modern age of neurodivergence. It’s also kind of like the record in microcosm: falling in and then out and then maybe back into love again (the circle of life!) - Handsome and her guests often playing the opposing partners in a couple, delivered in autotuned vocals over banging electro.

If that’s the formula, the Handsome Gang do go out of their way to keep your attention by changing things up, just a little. For instance, the very next cut, Running Out Of Time with flowerkid and St South delivers more of those relationship rumblings, but over a frisky and lean drum’n’bass beat; nice. You definitely won’t fail to notice the change-up when Jamaica Moana jumps on the mic., rapping her way over the trap of Ego or the bass music of closer Exist. Even without the variations in genre I think this collection would be a winner: the songwriting, the pop sensibility is just…good! There’s four singles off the album already and plenty more Handsome could tap if she wanted to. I guess it’s a tribute to her vision of a friendly, shared space, that -even if half the relationships here everyone’s singing about are in uproar- all the musicians just seem to click. It’s like they say: good at music, bad at life.

Not really though, I think the queer-friendly, open-mic that Handsome has provided for all her friends is as nice a social project as it is a musical one. If it continues like this it might even become an institution. It doesn’t happen half as often as it should in the indie music biz, but for the Handsome Gang - Every Second We Try, is really paying off.

- Chris Cobcroft.