The Aces Music (label)
15 August 2025 (released)
19 August 2025
On 15 August, indie-pop quartet The Aces released their fourth studio album ‘Gold Star Baby’. With twelve unique tracks and a runtime of just over half an hour, this latest album sees the Utah-bred friends freshen their discography, delving into the world of disco infused pop.
‘Gold Star Baby’ commences with ‘Welcome to Gold Star Baby’ a brief, introductory track featuring a classic disco instrumental alongside a narration which feels like a nostalgic film trailer. Similar to building excitement to see heartthrobs on the big screen, The Aces do just that to anticipate the dreamy ecstasy of ‘Gold Star Baby’.
Moving seamlessly into ‘Jealous’ and ‘The Magic’, the two leading singles for the project, The Aces showcase their confident experimentation into disco-pop with syncopated basslines, and repetitive groove-driven melodies. These elements powerfully emphasize the bold and unfiltered lyricism that are omnipresent characteristics throughout The Aces’ discography.
The album’s title track further encapsulates the quartet’s plans for this latest release. ‘Gold Star Baby’ as a release feels as equivocal as it is explicit in nature. Listeners are left wondering is 'Gold Star Baby’ a place, a person or a state of being. This ambiguity along with the LP’s themes of confidence, fun and freedom is what makes this release theatrically enthralling to its listeners.
As much as the LP feels like a sonic journey of its own, listeners are enticed into a storyline of a night out, one that is queer and uncannily realistic. ‘The Girls Interlude’ brings a continuation of this storyline, with a phone call between two friends who will be attending ‘Gold Star Baby’ despite the possibility of bumping in their exes. This circumstance ironically reminds listeners of the stereotype that the queer community is chaotically intertwined socially.
The continual motif throughout the album is the maintaining of a persona, especially in the presence of wandering eyes and a love interest. This is particularly seen in tracks ‘She Likes Me’ and ‘Stroke’, with the latter including the lyric: “tell me, who don’t love a compliment? I’m not insecure / Or at least I pretend / Need a girl who keeps me confident.”
‘Spending the Night’ and ‘Fire in the Hole’ suggest the reality-altering night out of ‘Gold Star Baby’ must eventually come to an end. Although potentially bittersweet, the protagonist of ‘Gold Star Baby’ is left balancing the desire of wanting to be in love with staying in their make believe. With the lyric, “But each time you look at me / the fantasy’s quick fading”, ‘Spending the Night’ highlights the haunting reality of parting ways with a new flame.
‘Gold Star Baby’ presents The Aces at their most unstoppable. Its sonic curation was pertinent in every aspect: lyricism which seems confident but carefully constructed, instrumentation and production which was funky, danceable but still very ‘Aces’ in nature, the ongoing themes of love, reputation and jealousy, and the tracklist order. Despite being a risky (and even unexpected) move for the indie-pop group, their commitment to the bit within ‘Gold Star Baby’ was clever, inviting and electric in its own right.
