Girlpool: Compelling, Catchy, and Decidedly Unchlorinated
“We didn’t think that people were going to listen to it, “ says Girlpool’s Cleo Tucker of making Before The World Was Big–her band’s first album, released last summer and still impressing people all these months later.
They are a fascinating pair, Tucker and bandmate Harmony Tividad, two very bright, upbeat young women who met at L.A. venue The Smell, realized they had similar musical interests, and let things proceed as they should.
So far, what’s resulted has been a pair of recordings—an eponymous EP and the World album, both for Wichita Recordings—that remain completely addictive listening, an interesting blending of sophisticated and primitive, musically spare but surprisingly filling. From the first notes of “Blah Blah Blah,” the opening track on their 2014 EP, one could hear hints of the Marine Girls, of Beefheart’s Magic Band, and maybe more–but there was no doubt that was being played was entirely original, non-derivative, and–oh yeah–from the heart.
“We decided to keep it just the two of us,” says Tucker of the band’s earliest days. “We just sort of wanted it to be lyrics in front, and kind of raw and vulnerable—nothing to really hide. We felt like we wanted to be really exposed, musically.”
And so they are. If there are influences to be had in Girlpool’s music, it could be via artists they especially have liked—My Bloody Valentine, Elliott Smith and Bright Eyes, the latter of whom they mutually bonded over at The Smell in pre-band days—but the thing is: They sound nothing like those artists whatsoever.
“I think the only planet that we belong to is our own,” notes Tucker. “The one that Harmony and I make together. I don’t think we really feel obliged to be anything other than the two of us.”
They have moved around recently—from L.A. to Philadelphia and maybe even back again, as we caught them out here in Yahoo’s Santa Monica studios last month—and we suspect they’ll be moving around even more in the near future. The road beckons.
But we suggest if you haven’t yet heard Girlpool, you should, and here is your opportunity. Enjoy it, and them.
