To paraphrase Girls' growing mythology, frontman Christopher Owens was raised in a cult that scared away his father, pimped out his mother, and allowed his brother to die as a baby. Owens teen-tramped his way to a cozy spot under the wing of a Texas millionaire then ended up in San Francisco where he and band-mate Chet White recorded Album under the influence of an entire pharmacy. It's the soundtrack to a movie I would never watch.
Let me walk that back a few steps. Album is not bad. It is not distasteful or poorly executed, unoriginal or listless. It's a decent rock record full of moody little DIY tunes including stand-out single "Hellhole Ratrace." It's believable and at times charming, never over-reaching in concept or execution. Their sound is something like Elvis Costello singing Beach Boys songs through the lens of Hardcore-era Pulp. But Costello is best when he's howling for the cheap seats, Pulp played real perversion like a bawdy joke and The Beach Boys - now over-referenced icons of sun-emo* jangle-pop - were ultimately 1960's snapshot storytellers and merchants of Americana just like Warhol and his silk-screened soup cans. Girls choose to moan when they might howl, leer when they might wink and blur their captured images in favor of form over subject. Album fails to provide the ecstatic release or profound realization needed to either overcome or earn its own icky origins or set them apart from their heroes and peers.
Sadly I won't be surprised to hear one day that Owens died prematurely of his own instability, and that would be too bad. Everyone deserves a second chance and this seems to be his so I really hope it works out. Also sadly, I am all but certain that Girls and Album will evaporate into pop culture's easily erased digital memory before you can say Arctic Monkeys.
* sunny + emotive = sun-emo. I just made that up.
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