Light, Bright

You know that part in that Girls song where Christopher is all exuberant & he goes Oh, I wish I had a suntan/I wish I had a pizza & a bottle of wine? Man, I am so there right now. (&, at the risk of completely changing the subject, am I the last person in town to know about the hardcore version of the video for that song? N(even remotely)SFW, btw.)

Anyway, I had my sunglasses on briefly this a.m., for the first time in like a week. bc it’s been raining here, yeah. In the wintertime here, the world gets gray & heavy & it gets good & wet. Plus there’s that whole getting-out-of-work-&-shit!-it’s-already-dark-out trauma on a daily basis. Sigh. Maybe that’s why all the music I seem to want to hear lately is bright & light & clean & nice.

I picked up Real Estate a couple of weeks ago, before all this weather started up. I liked it, but then promptly forgot all about it. Now all of a sudden it’s tonic for what ails me. It just puts me poolside, drinking rum & it’s not even lunchtime & oops it looks like I’ve gone & gotten myself a little bit drunk already but that’s OK I don’t have to be anywhere for hours & hours & damn the sunshine feels good on my face & yes I do think another round would be nice, merci beaucoup.

Yeah, it puts me right there:

Pool Swimmers - Real Estate

Beach Comber - Real Estate

So that’s nice. But you know what’s really grabbing me right now all of a sudden is the XX. I had heard that the XX were some kind of bfd at the CMJ this year, so whoop-de doo was my initial response to that. They’ve come through town here a couple of times lately now, opening for other bands, but I didn’t make it out to see them, & I really was not understanding all the fuss to be perfectly honest.

I mean, you hear the XX & you get it, more or less instantly. You think Yeah, I got it. Because this music is pretty simple, & it’s really pretty stark. Listen to any of their songs for roughly 60 seconds, & you have effectively heard every single sound in the musical palette of the XX. There’s no bombast here, no deep layers of sound that you only notice on the tenth listen, no sudden upheavals in tempo, dynamic, or volume.

VCR - The xx

Heart Skipped A Beat - The xx

Surprisingly now, though, I actually am on more or less my tenth listen to some of these songs. I’ve warmed up to the XX. Or maybe it’s just that the XX have warmed their way up to me, now that the season's weather outside is all, you know, frightful.

See, listening to summery music like Girls & Real Estate might put me momentarily in a fantasy place I’d like to be. & that’s nice, sure. But maybe the XX are putting my feet on the ground right here where I actually am. Here, where it’s warm inside while it’s cold out there. I can feel the cold in the music of XX, but it’s all outside, over there, while we are here, inside. Warm & dry & cozy. Oh yeah: & sexy. That’s what it took me all those listens to actually get: that the XX have, you know, a certain sort of something that's sexy.

So I'm listening to the XX & now I'm all Let It Snow.

Getting Into Girls.

It used to be kind of a *thing* that White Stripes only had two members. It was novel, right? Then came Black Keys, then the Kills, the Ting Tings, um, Tenacious D (does that count)? Anyway, is it lately starting to seem like duos are becoming more of a normal thing? Within a couple of days just this week, I’ve heard about three new 2-member bands: (1) Sleigh Bells; (2) Acrylics; and (3) Girls.

I like Girls. Girls are actually 2 boys whose band is called Girls, & their album is called: “Album.” Irony: I stumbled across them on the web, but it turns out they’re locally-grown, right here in our own San Francisco. Not that I get out enough to be in the know re: up-&-coming bands in my own backyard, but I’m working on that. Anyhoo, the buzz has officially commenced for Girls. I see them getting reviewed now on a bunch of blogs & on Pitchfork, but also Village Voice, & even NY Times is enthused.

So, I’m listening to “Album,” and I’m really thinking I could get into Girls. “Album was not recorded in any studio,” its liner notes proudly proclaim. Well, duh. Album was evidently recorded in bedrooms & wherever, & it more or less sounds like that. This is not a criticism. I have great fondness for the lo-fi, low-tech, DIY approach in general. Here, it’s actually a big part of why I’m really getting into Girls.

Here’s the thing: these boys in Girls are some truly great songwriters. No shit, they can really craft the pop hooks, like I find myself singing along to the 2nd chorus when it’s only the 1st time I’ve ever heard the song. So, yeah, it’s way catchy. So much so, that Album could easily have been just too saccharine & cute & pretty for its own good. I’m just saying. BUT, this is not the way of Album, no.

As written, the songs on Album are clean, i.e., unadorned, um *economical* maybe even. There’s no unnecessary explaining in the lyrics, there’s nothing extraneous in the chords. The songs, they are tight. But the *production* of Album takes an exactly opposite approach: the sound is cluttered with random effects & noises & colors. There’s lots of distortion, there’s lots of reverb, there are a lot of sonic layers muddying up these otherwise squeaky songs. Net effect? These very good Girls are getting good & dirty. Which, empirically, is just hot go ahead tell me I’m wrong.

Oh, & the arrangements are utterly unafraid of occasional excess. So while, on some songs, Girls get in & get out wham bam, on others they really take their time veering off on some exploratory tangent. So, e.g., Track 2 “Laura” is basically finished at 3:00 on the dot, but continues on for another 1:51 for no reason other than to groove on the chords, & noodle around a bit on the keyboard & the bass. & why the hell not? It’s a great song, & it’s just NICE to be able to savor it a little longer. I mean, what’s the hurry?

I see on their website that they’re going to be playing here at home very soon. Fri 11/20 at Swedish American Hall (I think that’s actually just part of Café du Nord, right?), and then the next night at Bottom of the Hill. I think I need to seriously check out Girls on one of those nights. Who’s in?

Here's a video, although it's not the best song on Album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuoTjYYqe4c