Girls - "Album"
It’s unfortunate in a way, but when you discuss Girls and their brilliant 2009 debut, unimaginatively titled Album, you have to discuss the story behind the band.
There are two men who are Girls: Christopher Owens and Chet “JR” White, but its Owens’ story, and voice, which dominate the band. Frontman Owens’ early life reads like Greek tragedy: his family lived in the grips of the Church of God cult and bounced around the world with the church. During that time his older brother died a preventable death because of the cult’s prohibition on medical intervention, his father ditched the family and his mother was occasionally forced into prostitution by the cult. Finally Owens absconded, but to a life on the streets. That is when our wandering hero’s fate changes and his story of his personal revival, ultimately realized by this album, begin.
Under unclear circumstances, a local millionaire took Owens under his wing and off the streets. Owens later moved to San Francisco where he and White formed Girls. The two twenty-nine year olds hit the studio to record Album, they popped every pill they could get their hands on and recorded a sunny, fuzzed out pop masterpiece.
A back story like that can be a blessing and a curse for a band, for all of the attention it brings it can also make the music a side-show to the story.
Fortunately for me, I knew nothing about Girls when I first listened to them. I was insulated from the hype generated from the band’s story and the release of their first two singles, ‘Lust for Life’ and ‘Hellhole Ratrace.’ I didn’t see the sexy, stylized videos of the band and friends in apparent home movie, super 8 style reverie - sometimes approaching orgy. I knew literally nothing of them until a friend dropped it on me. If there is anything more out of place with the band’s free-love, hippy sex image created by those videos, it was me giving Album a first listen as I folded laundry on a Tuesday night. But I’m glad it happened like that. My relative insulation and ignorance allowed the music to stand on its own undeniable merit.
As you listen to Album, Owens’ voice strikes you immediately. Amid the jangles and quirky pop-melodies his strange, idiosyncratic vocals form the backbone of the songs. Flexible, but always seemingly fragile and evocative, Owens squeaks, croons and even pops his way through the twelve song album of songs about unrequited love, pain and general suffering.
On the opening track ‘Lust For Life,’ he squeaks out a list of wishes, from a tragic wish for a father to the mundane: “A pizza and a bottle of wine.” Then he drops it on us, “Yeah I’m just crazy, I’m fucked in the head.” It seems a little too much, too weird, especially with the jangle pop background. But ultimately it’s what makes this album work so well. There is a constant tension between the upbeat, Beach Boys pop sound of the music and his sometimes heartrendingly depressive lyrics. But this album is not a downer, and you always feel, even in his most depressed state that Owens is trying to pull out, trying to believe. When he sings on ‘Lauren Marie’ “But what is life without a dream and even I know dreams can still come true” you believe him.
There are times when Album becomes like a Thomas Bernhard novel: so negative it morphs into parody. That’s when Album works best and the negativity magically turns uplifting. This happens on the epic song ‘Hellhole Ratrace,’ a nearly seven minute track that opens with Owens morosely singing “I’m sick and tired of the way that I feel, I’m sick of dreaming and its never for real.” He continues, modulating his voice, almost pleading as he sings “I don’t want to cry my whole life through; I want to do some laughing too.” The song morphs into shoegazer fuzz as Owens continues, repeating his sad mantra calling for us to “Come on, come on, come on, come on, laugh with me.” It’s oddly incongruous, slightly uncomfortable, but it’s a song that never fails to make me feel better.
Chet “JR” White seems to be destined to remain in the shadows behind Owens, but he plays his part well. His arrangements and production are filled with small details and quirks that give the seemingly straightforward pop song structure added legs and keep you finding new sounds even after fifty listens.
But it’s Owens’ band. And he closes by summing up the album with a personal statement of his life’s turnaround on ‘Darling.’ He let’s us know “I was feeling like I’ve nothing inside, but I found it all in a song.” You’d hope that this seriously weird, tragic man has indeed found his life in these songs. In its context his tragic story gives the lyrics added authenticity and it increases the wonderful tension of sad and happy, optimism and pessimism which drive the album to pop greatness.
