Girlatones - Fitting In Well

This post was transferred from Somnambulus.

Pop songs are easy currency.  And like small change, they are often as worthy.

But pop songs can be a very astute media.  Especially when they are more complex than easy lines and hooks.

That's why we are grateful for bands like The Modern Lovers, for The Cannanes.  For those perspicacious folk who have given us impossibly upbeat songs that defy the meleé; because they they are wry, and they artfully combine the guileless with the percipient.

Girlatones are canny modern lovers because they are insightful and because they are not afraid to entertain the affectual and the goofy; they bring it to light and give it a rightful place.  They remind us of what we care about, but may not want to admit.  That is what we magnetise to in the great songs of Richman and in the Gibson/O'Neill collaborations.

You can listen to the album here.

The album opens with Share the Love.  Love is about idealism, and in good measure -- realism.  Share the Love is a bright ode to the unquestionable credence that the idealistic can measure the realistic.

Girlatones are also well grounded and can weave brightness with careful twists of seemingly inadvertent irony.  And it is here that the pop song becomes art that stands time.

You're My Friend is a brilliant play on reflection, attraction, and aspiration.  Like Share the Love, the song builds toward the end of the song.  In the first song, it is just one word that is a testament to their belief -- at 1:36 -- "Share".  One word, that could almost go unnoticed, that stands alone.  Similarly, at 1:57 in You're My Friend, the chord change simulates the transgression through the glass, as the unreal becomes the unreal real: the double negative that fulfils the protagonist's positive.  And the break through is honestly and fallibly reflected in Jesse Williams' voice at 2:23, precisely on the right word, because of their common vision.  The premise is personified by the quirky guitars at 1:27.  Here is another strength of Girlatones that defies simplistic pop: they know how to make the music reflect the intention.

Recipes to Me is much more complex than the collage of images may at first imply.  The incongruity of the concepts cleverly captures the conflicting ideals of the protagonist and antagonist.  The contract between the led and the misleading, faith and betrayal in almost impossible circumstances.  It highlights commitment and manipulated reality for self-righteousness.  Whatever failure could be cited in justification, it is an ultimate abuse; but the genius lies in Williams' ability to paint it with his unfailing sight on love.

Misunderstood has been my favourite song in Girlatones' set this last year, and is perfectly placed on the album.  It is multivalenced, and here, everything Girlatones do so well, everything they believe in, is tested.  It is the most untypical song on the album, it is the most untypical song that I have heard them play since I saw them at their first gig -- a year ago almost to the day.  But it here that everything shines.  It takes the challenge with conviction in lyric and some excellent musicianship.  Listen to it playing understated to 2:16, then listen to the cymbals chime in brilliantly, and then face down at 2:30.  They begin to come into their own at 2:33, then that indefatigable guitar starts to twist it around at 2:39, to come out, so coruscating, at 2:45.  Listen to the drummer driving the ride all through that, and build ominously through the bass drum to 3:42.  Then the guitars take over, and Booty comes back in as brilliantly as before.  Though the guitars take the lead, listen to Tam Matlakowski (Tam Vantage) on the bass.  Williams has chosen the most apposite musicians to realise his score.  Ironically it is here, on the bass, where Matlakowski holds onto the brightness -- where he emulates the hope -- the lifts the whole song through this complex and beautiful cacophony.  So understated and strong.  So perfect.  To the close.

Misunderstood, deliciously long at 4:51, is the volta on the album.  Williams, as in lyric, knows how to craft form in the shape of this album.  Misunderstood is a considered choice at the fourth song on the album.  We have been treated to unconditional love, and despite that, we have seen it's faith in breach, and misunderstood.  Then listen to the opening lines of Fever.

Fever opens with stomping guitars.  But Williams and Leah Senior (Leah Senior) pivot their musical lines too, to bring the brightness in.  If you know Girlatones, you know the nature of these guitarists' collaboration, and it is all about bright landscapes.  Despite the opening lines, they profess love in lyric and Williams' unswerving harmonica at 0:59, 1:56 and 2:49.

Put Me Back Together illustrates the fragility felt when we believe we are defined by being loved.  Perhaps it also shows the redemptive power that is capable in love.  Girlatones seemingly simplistically, but carefully, craft the incongruence through a musical helix: the bass works up as the guitars work down and vice versa, creating uncompromised harmony.  They depict the conflict between who we believe we are, and our perceived sense of wholeness from the relationship.

Park Crowd seems to call out the pretension that permeates the north side.  "You make decisions to switch off your awareness" also calls it for everyone who follows convenience over awkward reality: "I've gone and lost faith in you".  Sometimes calling it and staying true can be a lonely path.  Williams depicts it with his indomitable optimism, "Just when you think you're all alone / Then you find a friend."  There'd be many who'd be happy to be outside "the circle", and where "the party starts again".

One of the endearing elements on this album are in the moments after the songs finish - an additional drum beat, the fade and bend of a guitar note, and here, Senior's beautiful laugh!

2 Become 1 is an ingenious play on words, and it's focus on equality in relationship.  The baritone tuning contrasts Williams' register in this song, again claiming balance and equality between them and the final lyrics.  The guitar switches ironically before the close to a bright glissando.

Fitting in Well is what Girlatones do.  But with the right folk, because "there is more than market analysis on [their] mind".  Their irreverence is sweetly proto-punk.  They are controversial in as much as they are contra verse -- against the standardised pop songs, because their's is infused with a deeper meaning.

You're going to love Girlatones.  You can't help it.  But when you get your dose of goodness with them, it's only going to be good for you.

You can get your copy here.

Photos - Northcote Social Club - May 2017

© JoAnne Frances

RVG - A Quality of Mercy

This post was transferred from Somnambulus.

It's a long time between posts, but music that opens the periphery in our musical landscape doesn't come along readily, even in our active music scene.

Sometimes a lot of good creative work gets held behind the palisades of cultural immaturity.  Sometimes it takes a while for things to evolve, ripen and manifest.

When I first met Romy Vager, she assumed a different monicker.  Her band was smaller, the first time I saw it.  Since then a lot has changed.  RVG has come out with more than a first album.

Listen to it here.

A Quality of Mercy (AQoM) is a long time coming.  Compassion, forgiveness and forbearance take a long time to find their place in everyday lives.  That is what Vager brings to us in final overview, but not without the evidence of the bitter trail.  These condemnations are foisted by fear, intolerance and prejudices.  They are often a sordid vilification of gang mentality.  Sometimes we spend time in dark landscapes imposed by others to understand that the root of their intention is more closely allied to their own deficit, rather than our own.  This time, in the shadow of death, also lets us demarcate who we are, if to no-one else but ourselves - to whom, of course, it is most important.  But great art is an elucidation.  Vager shares hers with us, so we can follow her journey through the heinous spaces into the light that she is rightfully owed.  Hers is a pathway that fewer have to travel.  The way she describes it fearlessly, but with the understanding that comes with having to endure rancid testimonies of humanity, provides us with a desperate, keening narrative.  Vager's song-lines also express penetrating sensitivity of uncomplicated desire that vouchsafes true intimacy.

The title track, 'A Quality of Mercy', opens on a five second aural streetscape, which is taken over by the echo of surfing guitar.  This brilliant song reveals the psychotic trammelling of small-mindedness that tampers reason, and is compounded by fear to whitewall the perception of difference.  The brilliance comes through the questioning and investigation of hegemonic condemnation, and opens like a catharsis of self realisation and self-justification to rend strappings asunder at 2:50.  At 2:00, I am reminded of the renegade guitar work and vocals of Jeffrey Lee Pearce.  As Pearce did with The Gun Club, so does Vager: She defines new territory.

'Cause and Effect' (CaE) has some intelligent lyric twists.  It could almost be 'Cause and Affect'.  It opens with "You're gonna have to lose somebody else's mind", reclaiming the space Vager heralded in AQoM, and expanded through that imagery recurring in "You're gonna have to turn off someone else's life".  But she knows the fight is not over yet, and language like "it won't be pretty" are so apt for the ground she intends to make her own through the inversion of sensibility, and the inversion of love which can "destroy a fellow life".  The wry humour in the dearth of its wake lifts the song with the lyrics, "And my love ... you know you're the only one ... that I ever despised ... in the whole of my life.  I used to wish you would die.  Cause and effect."  After this, at 2:00, the music breaks through in redemption, and similar lyrics change their meaning with intonation to demonstrate the inversion, and evincing the reclamation of identity.

IBM changes the tone set by AQoM and CaE to anthropomorphise a lover and digital hardware.  The humour again belies poignant observations, which can be interpreted across the evolution of the digital landscape from the 1980s (reflected in the retro computer sound effects) to the present.  This seems relevant too, to Vager's deep interest in the music of this time, and how it concatenates in her music.

'Heart Paste' follows the lighter musical theme of IBM, but which belies the darker lyrical intentions.
 The "personal charm" of Vager is evident.  Wanted and attained.  We all know the conflict of austerity and luxury.  For some, what is socially-rited can seem almost unattainable to another.  Vager tells us about those irreversible actions we feel compelled to take to accord us space and distance.  The stark alienation that comes with that, but then how that space can be refilled with the reclamation of identity, as Vager does so beautifully at 1:45.  Vager doesn't care about common sense, but who would when the sense of the common majority is warped or myopic.

'The Eggshell World' again crosses liminality and contrasts diametrical opposites.  The want to be two people to fulfil incompatible desire effectively shows the protagonist's conflict, but also her awareness of the sensibilities of both extremes.  What seems to be so exclusive of the other is a strange but apt metaphor in the eggshell - the fragility of persona when neither of those states, nor anything between them can be inhabited; and the thin and brittle membrane set to protect the vulnerable.

'Vincent van Gogh' reiterates the themes of opposition, and of cause and effect.  It's about disillusionment with what we have emulated, and the resultant faux martyrdom.

'Feral Beach' follows on similar themes, albeit on a more personal and carnal level; where intimacy becomes perverted, noxious and unrecognisable.

'That's All' is beautiful closure on the dark themes of this album.  It has that naive intimacy that has import: we bring so many of the feelings and sentiments Vager deftly describes into our adulthood.  But they have come without name because perhaps we didn't know how to, or were too embarrassed to give them a monicker.

And here we come full circle.  Back to Vager, back to all she has achieved, and all that she can name because she has travelled and mapped that road that so few of us know.  This is what makes her work seminal - these places we have not been, but are so important to understand.

This is RVG's first release.  It is only a few months old, but they have already returned in the studio to make their second album.  If you follow RVG on social media, you know they promise it will be even better than their inaugural release.  As we know, it is about the journey.  This is a fine premise and a worthy edition to have as part of the pending RVG catalogue.

You can download your copy here.

Photos from the Quality of Mercy launch at the Tote - March, 2017.
© JoAnne Frances