Send "Girls " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Nytimes |
 Girls, the San Francisco duo of Christopher Owens and J R White, arrives with shoulders shrugged, head slightly down. Its debut album, titled “Album” (True Panther Sounds/Matador), is a lean ramble, in no way ostentatious. Knowingly or not, Mr. Owens has the tender brooding of Buddy Holly down cold, with a touch of Elvis Costello’s shakiness in his voice. But “Album” isn’t clean: it’s flayed and ragged and hazy. Like so much of the noise and psychedelia lately infesting the indie-rock underground, underneath the slop lies terrific instincts for clean, artful melody. In that vein “Album” is one of the year’s most bracing pop releases, and one of the best, a devastatingly fresh reframing of the pop songbook. Mr. White lends versatile support on these numbers, which pilfer elementary punk, country-rock and 1950s-vintage shuffles. (A beautiful instrumental with stirring gospel organs is called “Curls.”) But Mr. Owens is the revelation, with deliciously malleable voice and attitude: desperate on “Ghostmouth,” snide on “Lust for Life,” pleading on “Lauren Marie” and on “Hellhole Ratrace, ” just plain old winded. The feelings are complicated but the songs are raw — like templates for others to copy.Men J D Samson was a second-wave addition to the long-on-hiatus feminist dance-punk outfit Le Tigre, helping the group shift from shouty and angular to shouty and smooth. Ms. Samson’s latest project, Men — which includes Michael O’Neill and Ginger Brooks Takahashi, her former band mates in Hirsute — began as a Le Tigre spin-off but has developed into a force in its own right. “Limited Edition Demo” (Men Make Music), the group’s debut EP, is full of dreamy post-disco: “Off Our Backs” recalls “Borderline”-era Madonna, and “Credit Card Babie$” is new wave agitation on the politics of procreation: “Raise our kids/Radical politics/Sontag in the crib.” Ms. Samson sings in a faint, naïve voice, which only makes her tart lyrics more beguiling; over Men’s slick, jaunty arrangements the words land like slaps. The group will spend the fall touring with Gossip, then Peaches. As for Le Tigre, reports this summer had the group working on songs for the coming album from another avatar of complicated feminism: Christina Aguilera....full text |
| Billboard |
| As yet another indie pop album heralded in by a snowstorm of internet praise largely the result of three brilliantly shot heroin chic videos for "Hellhole Ratrace," "God Damned," and "Lust for Life," Girls' 2009 album (simply titled Album) actually proved itself worthy of the hype upon its release. Comprised of two free-spirited San Francisco burnouts (one appearing relatively clean cut, the other greasy haired and disheveled) JR White and Christopher Owens go for the Mellow Gold with their take on D.I.Y. California pop. Where the similarly blog-toted Wavves offered a pill-popping, pot-fueled skater's perspective on fun in the sun, Girls offer up a similarly thrifty and drug-addled ode to the warm climate, but filtered through a pair of green-tinted hippie shades. In their brand of lo-fi, they opt to go against the momentary trend of recording to the red, and instead use an earthy approach, with clean Ariel Pink guitar twang and Spiritualized psychedelic plate reverbs. White plays the producer role, acting as a fly on the wall at times, and at others layering shoegaze swells to fill the backdrop of Owen's minimalistic, squeaky voiced guitar ballads. Simplicity is the duo's ally, as is their knack for keen Beach Boys melodies. It's not anything that hasn't been tried before, but the two 29 year olds have chemistry, and they deliver a consistent batch of songs that sound at once warm and familiar. As a whole, everything's relaxed and dreamy, perfectly matching the '70s aesthetic of their videos: washed out with over-exposed sun streaks, and a Crayola watercolor pallete. A few songs take a turn to the unexpected. The rough-and-tumble "Big Bad Mean Mother Fucker" appropriates a '60s song about driving a muscle car to the surf (think "Little Honda") and runs it through a dirty ringer of garage grime, while "Headache" takes a tongue-in-cheek lounge-ballad approach, complete with jazzy key changes, and, of course, added beach sounds. Among the slight detours, the majority of the album always manages to stay true to the baked-summer pop aesthetic. "Summertime" is a slow burner that encourages free-spirited 'tude with lines like "Lay in the park, smoke after dark, get high like I used to do/ Summertime, soak up the sunshine with you" before detouring into a blistering synth inferno. Meanwhile, "God Damned" is a catchy little acoustic and bongo number, perfect for a Dolores Park picnic. There's no shortage of tunes to instantly hum along to, but still, the seven-minute "Hell Hole Ratrace" remains their crowning achievement. ~ Jason Lymangrover, All Music Guide...full text |
| Cokemachineglow |
| As much as I hate to begin another Girls review the exact same way, their name is still rich territory were one to ever feel compelled to accuse bands of false advertising. The San Francisco-based duo, despite featuring girls on the covers of their records and in their press photos, is most definitely two men: Christopher Owens and Chet White. Their songs are certainly in love, or trying to be in love, but more with music and the west coast than with actual girls. On Album, their debut, Owens and White are bigger on Big Star-styled power-pop, Jonathan Richman’s supposed innocence, and relentless optimism—the idea that pop music can still change at least its creators’ lives. Album‘s songs are strikingly welcoming, full of endearingly narcotized sunshine and pop tributes. In fact, this could be the single most accessible thing to have ever been inspired by Spiritualized’s bliss-outs, which appear in condensed form all over. “Laura,” otherwise a relatively concise bit of pop built on a bass line mixed so loudly that it practically steals the listener’s attention from Owens’ soaring, snarling vocals, gives way to a two-minute coda of layered vocal harmonies and dense guitars, and the song is better for it. “Summertime”‘s optimistic melody explodes into three minutes of drawn-out guitar chords atop an unbelievably cheesy synth line, yet there’s something almost irresistible about it. “Big Bad Mean Motherfucker” plays out like a harsher version of Yo La Tengo’s cover of “Little Honda,” drugging the hell out of a Brian Wilson-derived song structure. There’s still cars, but getting high and getting laid are clearly much more important than shifting gears or actually driving the thing somewhere. Despite the fact that these are songs willing to give themselves almost totally to freakouts, Girls’ pop sensibility almost always comes out on top, and the songs never get eaten by moments of indulgence....full text |
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