erasing clouds
 

Girls, Father, Son, Holy Ghost

review by dave heaton

For a band to have songs titled “Vomit” and “Die”, but also ones called “Honey Bunny” and “Love, Like a River” is rare, but that’s who Girls is. They have that rebellious punk spirit and sensitive, sentimental inclinations. They pull on different styles and inhabit them equally. They always seem aware of that act of putting on an impression that music-making is, and how much that can mean to listeners. Christopher Owens sings with the studied style of a crooner, always seeming aware that, as one song title puts it, it’s “Just a Song”, while also always fully aware of the way a simple song can hit a particular listener hard.

They do simple well, but it’s never as simple as it seems – here they favor lush arrangements, with gospelly backing vocals, but also the dreamy sound of one voice over a guitar. Like on the EP that bridged their two albums, there are songs clearly based on ‘50s/early ‘60s vocal pop; cute love songs like “Magic, “Saying I Love You” and “Honey Bunny”. “Alex”, one of my favorites is similar in lyrics but more like a ‘90s alternative/dream pop glide; rather Yo La Tengo-ish, in a beautiful way. Elsewhere are songs that seem to meander and drift, begging space-rock and psychedlia references, but eventually a very focused core of emotion emerges and strikes. In those songs is a universe of sadness and fear, but more importantly, a longing to escape from both. In "Just a Song", he sings, "nobody's happy now / seems like nobody's happy now", a key moment that illustrates the way what seems a isolated, solitary look inside one's own heart and mind, with an expression of the desire for change, becomes a look inside a societal heart and mind, with the same hope.

The 8-minute "Forgiveness" is the central piece there, where he becomes a self-help author for a second, an inspirational figure: "Nothing's gonna get any better if you don't have a little love...in your soul". In that moment and others like it, he resembles a Jonathan Richman (someone whose approach to guitar already emerges in spirit) or Kath Bloom, or for that matter, a Smokey Robinson or Dolly Parton - you certainly have your own list like this...a singer who in an instant makes you feel like everything wrong in the world can be OK, like there is an answer, like the utopia we dream of lives in our own hearts. In "Forgiveness" he lays out a path for the world, to move away from fear and sorrow, towards love and progress. His solution is forgiveness, on a one-to-one basis. Yes, it feels incredibly fitting that this album was released right after the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

He delivers his 'don't give up, things can get better' message right before the music explodes, with holy backing vocals, pounding drums and rising guitars (throughout, the music always seems perfectly in step with the feelings expressed in the lyrics), and he continues, "And I can hear so much music / and I can feel everything well / and I can see so much clearer / when I just close my eyes". For a lifelong music fan, who has spent so much of his life in his own brain, who remembers so vividly the childhood years of listening in my room alone, of experiencing music as a gateway to the world, to broader experiences and emotions and people and places...this is an absolutely monumental moment within a monumental song within a monumental album. An album from a band with a clear awareness of the power of music, and the ability to channel that power in a way that contains memories of decades of music while feeling as timely and present as music can get.

{www.truepanther.com}


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