San Franciscan duo Girls are back with Father, Son, Holy Ghost, the follow up to their 2009 debut album Album. With 14 tracks in total, the album’s running time comes in at just under an hour. It’s noticeably more polished than Girls’ previous releases (but not over-produced in the slightest) and features tasteful guitar solos, harmonised oohs, soulful bass lines, a good mixture of clean riffs and finger-picking on guitar and distortion for just that little bit of grit and noise to even out the more sugary songs. Chris Owens’s husky drawls and soft croons are sounding as good as ever.
As part of the ‘new oldies’ movement that’s seeing somewhat of a resurgence at the moment, Girls draw heavily on ‘60s and ‘70s influences in Father, Son, Holy Ghost (Elvis Costello, The Beach Boys, Buddy Holly, Fleetwood Mac and so on). With almost half of the album’s tracks featuring a duration of more than 4.5 minutes, it’s more of a slow burner than something that captivates straight away.The album opens with the summer romance surf-rock song ‘Honey Bunny’ (see its delightfully corny video below), which is perhaps the most upbeat track on the album (even if it does include a slow, slide-filled bridge). ‘Saying I Love You’ sounds deceptively like another love song but has lyrics that aren’t as sweet as one would expect and ‘Magic’ is the resident cheesy (without being lame), jangly pop tune.
It appears that Girls are moving (very) slightly away from this fuzzy retro indie-pop they are known for with songs that have a more traditional rock’n’roll sound (‘Die’), and longer semi-epics that journey through several genres in the course of its duration (‘Vomit’ and ‘Just A Song’).
‘Die’ is an instrumental rock track, bar a single half-sung verse that’s as punk as Girls is ever going to get. With a wailing electric guitar line forming the melody, crunchy rhythm guitars and a healthy splashing of noise, ‘Die’ is the misfit of the album. But then, two thirds into the song, the pace slows and the sound morphs into something more typical of Girls.
Stand out track ‘Vomit’ begins with a sombre, lone guitar line and Owens’s voice, heavy with loneliness and anguish, almost whispering, “Nights I spend alone / I spend ’em runnin’ ’round lookin’ for you, baby.” The guitars become darker and more dramatic, until the tone shifts and what sounds like a gospel choir provides background oohs, a soul singer does sassy vocal gymnastics and a church organ starts playing. That is some masterful arrangements, right there.
Very much a throwback to the days of yore, Father, Son, Holy Ghost is a nostalgia-soaked record that has been carefully put together; the instrumentation is sometimes sparse, sometimes dense, but seems like it has been layered with purpose and feeling.
