Girls, Broken Hearts Club

review by dave heaton

So many reviews of Girls’ debut Album, even positive ones, focused on the way the lyrics jibed with singer Christopher Owens’ biography, his supposed vocal similarity to Elvis Costello (which I don’t hear at all), or the young California hipster look of the band and their music videos. What I loved about Album was the way Girls captured a romantic pop vibe, that feeling that a singer can take you, just you, with them to another place by singing some direct sentiments. Girls seem especially aware of that, writing lyrics that smartly comment on the whole star-listener connection, while emulating the same. Their songs have an awareness of the way a song artificially manufactures emotion in a way that feels authentic to listeners in the moment. And of how a singer, be it Frank Sinatra, Mick Jagger, Nina Simone or whoever, makes you feel like they’re sharing a secret with you.

The six-song follow-up Broken Dreams Club is less meta- about it, but embodies that aspect of their music even more fully. It’s even more focused on a particular sound and feeling: lush pop music carrying within it regrets and wishes.

”Little girl they just don’t know / about the weight you carry in your soul”, the first song begins, horns and strings playing up the swoon. It’s a call to bring that secret internal life into the open. “Just a look could be a start.”

That taking inner fears and sadness into the open is an action Girls perform beautifully. The succinct single “Heartbreaker” and the more stretched-out closer “Carolina” carry a luxurious sadness. Owens uses his voice like a crooner, plumbing depths and scaling heights over the course of a few bars, while the music envelops and accentuates. The title track, a dreamy ballad, is the moment under soft lights when the singer looks right at you and sings your pain, but then in the same gesture turns outward, making heartbreak into a global issue, wrapped up with all of the world’s problems: poverty, endless war, inequality. “I know you feel like I do too”, he sings. In one gesture, singer, song, and audience become part of the same “broken hearts club”. None have any secrets, all feel helpless, none are able to save the other, and they’re all looking for the same thing: a way to lighten the weight of their heavy hearts.

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