Artist: Girls
Album: Album
Year: 2009
Grade: 4.5 pretzels
Joining the xx in this year’s sweepstakes for “Indie Band With The Most Un-Googleable Name”, San Francisco’s Girls are definitely one of the most buzzed-about new acts of the year. Their debut album, Album (that was really fun to write), has passed the Pitchfork test and various other publications have been lining up behind them, praising the band’s retro-thinking, insidiously catchy style. While, personally, I’m not quite ready to jump on the “best-band-since-sliced-bread” bandwagon, I have to admit that Album has far too many irresistible songs to be ignored.
I mean, opening an album with the one-two knockout punch of “Lust For Life” and “Laura” is just unfair. The former is all jangle and trebly guitar chords, topped by Christopher Owens’ exuberant vocal performance. To follow that with the mid-tempo balladry of “Laura” creates a brilliant opening. So good, in fact, that the rest of the album struggles to keep pace. The rest of the album is full of songs that harken back to both the fuzzy romance of 50s rock & roll and the nerdish pining of Elvis Costello. It doesn’t hurt that Owens posses the same nasal croon as Costello, either. But nowhere on Album can you find songs that match the opening pair.
Not that the rest is just filler, mind you. The band’s first single, “Hellhole Ratrace”, justifies most of the praise that’s been lavished upon it, even despite the fact that it’s about three minutes too long. The album’s closing trio also put up a solid fight, best heard on the dark, sonically violent (and slightly ironically named) “Morning Light”. It’s on during the album’s middle section that things start to feel a bit undercooked. “Big Bad Mean Motherfucker” is the kind of song you’re amazed hasn’t been written before…and that’s not really a good thing. Likewise, “Summertime” never quite transforms into anything more than a generic, California-obsessed ballad. These missteps are still more than listenable, however. They just remind you that this is, after all, a debut album. Girls still have ways to grow and evolve.
The media overplays Owens’ background, growing up with the Children of God cult. For all the talk about how Album is a dramatic example of someone breaking out of the boundaries that have been placed upon them, the album sounds pretty predictable. It succeeds, however, because it delivers exactly what you’d expect really, really well. These songs sound like they’ve just escaped from a 50s diner, malts and burgers in hand, but in the best way possible. Album does more than just ape the past. It manages the very difficult task of reminding us of the past while still sounding timeless.
I mean, opening an album with the one-two knockout punch of “Lust For Life” and “Laura” is just unfair. The former is all jangle and trebly guitar chords, topped by Christopher Owens’ exuberant vocal performance. To follow that with the mid-tempo balladry of “Laura” creates a brilliant opening. So good, in fact, that the rest of the album struggles to keep pace. The rest of the album is full of songs that harken back to both the fuzzy romance of 50s rock & roll and the nerdish pining of Elvis Costello. It doesn’t hurt that Owens posses the same nasal croon as Costello, either. But nowhere on Album can you find songs that match the opening pair.
Not that the rest is just filler, mind you. The band’s first single, “Hellhole Ratrace”, justifies most of the praise that’s been lavished upon it, even despite the fact that it’s about three minutes too long. The album’s closing trio also put up a solid fight, best heard on the dark, sonically violent (and slightly ironically named) “Morning Light”. It’s on during the album’s middle section that things start to feel a bit undercooked. “Big Bad Mean Motherfucker” is the kind of song you’re amazed hasn’t been written before…and that’s not really a good thing. Likewise, “Summertime” never quite transforms into anything more than a generic, California-obsessed ballad. These missteps are still more than listenable, however. They just remind you that this is, after all, a debut album. Girls still have ways to grow and evolve.
The media overplays Owens’ background, growing up with the Children of God cult. For all the talk about how Album is a dramatic example of someone breaking out of the boundaries that have been placed upon them, the album sounds pretty predictable. It succeeds, however, because it delivers exactly what you’d expect really, really well. These songs sound like they’ve just escaped from a 50s diner, malts and burgers in hand, but in the best way possible. Album does more than just ape the past. It manages the very difficult task of reminding us of the past while still sounding timeless.
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