GIRLS: ALBUM

[rating:4]

Girls : Album

Label: True Panther Sounds

Release Date: September 22, 2009

When Girls’ Christopher Owens sings “Man I felt like I could lay down and die, then I found myself in a song” on “Darling,” there’s a palpable sense that rock and roll is salvation, and when he sings “Man I’m just crazy and fucked in the head,” it’s pretty easy to believe Owens was raised in a cult (!) and that salvation was a hard fought one.  It helps that these messages of salvation are dropped on top of a reverb soaked sound plate, and a jangled guitar driving them forward.  Separation and space really define the songs on Album, as even the straightforward psycho-billy rocker “Big Bad Mean Motherfucker” sounds like it was recorded in a massive echo chamber, with Owens singing through a transistor radio.  This space gives each song a very laid back, 2^nd bottle of red wine coolness that is especially evident on Album’s standouts “Lust for Life,” “Hellhole Ratrace” and “Ghostmouth.”  Owens’s vocal delivery, which is a weird mix between Elvis Costello and Axl Rose as front man for a 40’s big band, really puts the heart into these alternating melodic pleas and moments of rejoice.

The life of a rock and roll revivalist is a tough one, I’d think.  For every notable band that reveres the spirit of 50s & early 60s rock and roll (we’ll call them the Fonzies, i.e. The Ramones, Galaxie 500, just to name a couple), there are the Ralph Malphs of the world, trotting out the leather jacket & dropping pop culture references from the era without really getting it. Girls ply in the world of Rock & Roll revivalism on their exceptional debut album without sounding like homage.  Instead, they create a set of songs that are as essential to the form, evoking themes of youth without sounding immature, and revering the true spirit of the form, with songs about girls (have to love the girl’s name as the song title in both “Laura” and “Lauren Marie”), youthful isolation and the desire to figure out what’s next.  And, in this, the record is able to balance both reverence for the form and a total disregard for whatever conventions rock might have.

-John Whitaker