Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A Girls Album to Remember.

The album is Album and Girls are actually two guys - Christopher Owens and Chet White. There is a crazy back story that is almost too unreal to be true (check it out in the glowing review that prompted me to buy it). More important and impressive than that is the music - a pastiche of sounds siphoning the spirit of a time most Girls fans' parents probably weren't alive for into a modern-day lo-fi aesthete that renders freshness and urgency to .

The obvious vocal points of reference are Elvis Costello and Buddy Holly. Several of Album's best moments feature Owens' earnest attempt at combining the two legends' vocal tones into an entirely new creation. Opener, "Lust for Life", is all Costello circa "Peace, Love, and Understanding," while "Big Bad Mean Motherfucker" shreds like Buddy Holly trading in the horned-rims for a surfboard and a mohawk. That is to say, it's rockabilly gone punk with a dash of sun. The Holly vibe returns on "Summertime," some of the best five minutes and forty seconds I've spent listening to music this year.

"Morning Light" ditches the punkabilly vibe for a two-and-a-half minute suckerpunch of shoegaze - Jesus and Mary Chain and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club fans will approve - before spinning around 180 with the beautifully spacious instrumental, "Curls."

The centerpiece of Album is without a doubt, "Hellhole Ratrace," a seven-minute slow burner of a track that begins with acoustic sparseness before layering on feedback, bass, and handclaps until you forget that Owen's has been essentially singing the same vocal refrain the entire song. It's cathartic, yet restrained; unforgettable, but subtlety so.

For the initial listens, Album works as a collection of styles. "Morning Light's" fuzzed-out bliss. "Lust for Life" and "Laura's" Costello-leaning tendencies. "Headache's" lounge croon. You get the picture. After about a dozen spins, the idea of styles begins to fade, replaced by a brilliant collection of songs that won't leave your head and an album that, for me, is easily the best debut of the year.

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