Girls - Album
If Grizzly Bear’s career to date has taught us anything, it’s that even the most worn-out influences (in this case Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper’s) can still be re-tooled into thrilling, exotic new shapes by those with sufficient talent and imagination. San Fransisco oddballs Girls are the latest in such a line: they are certainly not the first band to really, really love Roy Orbison, The Beach Boys and Big Star, but few before them have coerced such a routine set of touchstones into so glorious a debut. This is surely the saddest record you’ll hear this year.
Girls come replete with a fascinating, squalid back-story involving the bizarre religious cult Children of God, tragic family bereavements and a vast intake of prescription pills. But you don’t need to know about any of that for the sense of lost love, misspent youth and debauched, hazy summers to drip from the speakers. A lot of it is down to Christopher Owens’ open book of a voice. Coming in somewhere between Alex Chilton’s sneer and Dennis Wilson’s fractured croak, it’s an incredibly emotive instrument. On pitch but untrained, robust but always on the verge of cracking – I’ve never heard lines like “Laura, baby, I’m right here!” resonate with such yearning before. Those of a certain age will rejoice that ‘you can make out all the words’, and they’d be right. The lyrics are remarkably direct – the record opens with the lines 2 "I wish I had a boyfriend / I wish I had a loving man in my life / I wish I had a father / And maybe then I would have turned out right”.
There’s a sense of wonder and childlike innocence here that just can’t be faked. Written in the aftermath of a bad break-up, Owens’ songs mostly concern heartbreak, friends and partying. “I don’t want to cry my whole life through / I wanna do some laughing too / So come on and laugh with me”, he pleads on stunning centrepiece Hellhole Ratrace. There’s hope amid the despair. If Owens’ vocals and lyrics are gorgeous, the music is equally stellar.
Rather than making yet another attempt to recreate the lushness of Pet Sounds, this record reminded me of the slightly damaged, soft-focus beauty of post-Smile Beach Boys – the Beach Boys of Forever, Disney Girls and Till I Die – as well as Dennis Wilson’s much-loved Pacific Ocean Blue. Recorded on an ancient computer, the lo-fi production values give the record a sepia-tinted, slightly beaten-up quality that sounds simply fantastic. It’s the musical equivalent of a warm hug – the heartbreak album of the year.
Mini review
A relatively late arrival (27) to the songwriting game, Girls frontman Christopher Owens more than made up for lost time with this stunningly accomplished debut. Never mind the back story – drugs, cults, girls and more drugs – this is an album brimming with songs of salvation and teary-eyed honesty that are as sonically diverse as they are compulsively listenable. Running the full gamut of classic American songcraft, from lonely Pet Sounds-era ballads to sub-three-minute power pop gems and even Sonic Youth-aping white noise, the only downside here is not being able to decide on a favourite track. By filtering their influences through a soft-focus, broken-down production aesthetic that brilliantly matches the slightly queasy, end-of-summer feel throughout, Owens and co. have delivered a record that already sounds like a bona fide classic. (Paul Harrington)
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