Girls vs. Women

So it is very funny to me that there are 2 bands out there, getting hyped at one point or another (well by Pitchfork anyways) w/ such lazy band names as Girls AND Women (2 separate bands guys). Though I find it difficult/pointless to keep up with / really give a lot of these bands a shot, sometimes they get me w/ a catchy melody, or if they have 1 or 2 good songs. Am I a fan of their music? Am I gonna rush out and buy their album on double vinyl? Sometimes.....
Enter, Girls w/ their (cleverly?) titled debut Album.

Album - Girls

I have to say I listened to this all the way through on the lovely little mp3 site lala.com this week and got through most of the cringe moments. I was actually able to feel some of the pain and beauty of some of these simple songs. To me it was like listening to the Beach Boys w/ Richard Hell as a vocalist, albeit a lot less poetic than Hell. In other words, what most indie bands have attempted (ripping off Brian Wilson) w/ some very strange, at times seemingly sarcastic vocals.



The lead singer apparently grew up in the Children of God cult and his mom ended up being prostituted, while he's never really known his father. He drifted a while and became a gutter punk before making a band / Album on pills. That must've been insane, and you can kind of hear it in his music. Granted, I wonder if I'd not read that before listening, how it would have affected my opinion from the start. I might have turned it off and moved on, who knows. I'm pretty glad I didn't; as much as I want to write this stuff off, it's stuck w/ me. It's got simple lyrics you can relate to about breaking up, and then it tips over that edge into territory you can't relate to about breaking up, which is nice too. But it is just a bunch of breakup songs (the tried and true format). The recording quality on Album kinda didn't hold up to their admittedly captivating roof-top performance here:




Now for Women



Another Pitchfork darling, yet somewhat-less-hyped band. I don't know much about them except for that they put out an album on Jagjaguar this year. They are more angular than most of their peers, but still use way too much reverb like most of their peers. This video reminded me of The Fall w/ Polvo's discord and was kinda the jam:



Again, they sound a lot better live than on their record. Their album was a disappointment. Let's face it, I really just threw them in this post as a point of comparison.