Ashe has dabbled in vintage aesthetics on and off since her 2021 debut, Ashlyn—a record you might describe as “Tove Lo in Lauren Canyon” or maybe “Carole King takes a 10 mg edible”—but in the wake of breakthroughs for retro-minded artists like Olivia Dean and Laufey, it finally feels like her approach to confessional songwriting has a secure place in the pop world. Ashe’s prior album, the intense but uneven Willson, ended with a moment of abject insecurity (“Will any of this matter?/Will any of us matter in the end?”), but she arrives on The Girl of Your Dreams in fighting shape, unafraid of a syrupy string section, a bout of Broadway-style belting, or even a hand-waggling key change. The allusions are pretty overt: “Stardust” is a hazier version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” and “Lasso the Moon” has a distinct “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” flavor. Still, the songs are so tight, confident and catchy, it’s hard to turn up your nose at their indebtedness to past eras.
Other than a couple lines about lovebombing and iced lattes, the lyrics feel pointedly timeless, with broad, universal imagery (the moon, the sun, the weather, the seasons) and a circular narrative that starts with Ashe as a regretful bride and ends with her having found someone worthy of marrying once more. Of course, she’s thinking all the way ahead to the speech her new husband will one day make at her funeral: “Say I found who I belong to/And the best thing I ever did was loving you.” If her current Marilyn Monroe hairdo didn’t tip you off, Ashe’s idea of romance is pure Hollywood, each breakup and make-up augmented with special effects and stretched to the widest of screens: She’s constantly falling into reveries about oceans at night and gardens at dusk, and memories of her ex give her chills even in a Chicago heatwave.
