“I’m sure the music world has long had it’s own version of [Vonnegut’s] Girl Pool. Picking up where Bikini Kill et al. left off, Girlpool’s music seems like a reaction against this… Coupling lyrics of everyday feelings with high-pitched screams of frustration, they come across not as hyper-realistic freedom fighters, but as real people with a just cause, people growing bolder with every small success, people ready to stand up for what is right”

But frustrated screaming is a tiring business, especially when it has little effect. Perhaps this is why their début album, Before The World Was Big, sees the duo take a new direction, swapping out the aggressive energy for wide-eyed sincerity, a yearning for simpler times where big issues passed over oblivious heads. This simplicity is present both musically and lyrically, with sparse instrumentation employing a minimal number of chords used to support their conversational vocals. And that’s conversational in subject and tone, with delivery ranging from hushed intimate whispers (e.g. on ‘Dear Nora’)  to chipper, excited babbling (‘Before The World Was Big’). The effect is something alluringly childish, a return to the (pre-)adolescent values of happiness, friendship and trust which lots of adults would do well to aspire to. Opener ‘Ideal World’ sets this up, acting as a bridge from the previous Girlpool releases by declaring the aims and intentions of the new record and giving context to the new direction:

“I was taught what to believe,
now I’m only certain that no one is free.
Tranquillise me with your ideal world”

The title track faces this directly, admitting a boredom with familiar surroundings and pining for a time when expectations were lower, when the idea of being bored or stuck in a dull town didn’t occur, when time was marked by board games and bath times and candy bars. But this is not one of those twee bands that uses juvenile imagery ironically. Girlpool aren’t saying we’re-so-cool-we-can-even-be-cool-playing-with-dolls. Rather, they’re saying that their minds are scary and their bodies are scary and world is very scary. They are opening up, voicing their insecurities and flaws.

Mom and Dad, I love you
do I show it enough?
I just miss how it felt standing next to you,
wearing matching dresses before the world was big

What makes this sharing of worries and secrets so cathartic and uplifting is that Tividad and Tucker are doing it together. Whatever her/his circumstances, the listener can’t help but feel part of something, recognised and included, not alone. When they ask “Do you feel restless when you realise you’re alive?” on ‘Chinatown’, you feel like shouting affirmatives, so when the song continues “I’m still looking sureness in the way I say my name / I am nervous for tomorrow and today,” you know you are on the same wavelength. As they sing on ‘Pretty’:

“I could only stare at my feet
when you said you felt
close to me.
Transfixed on lullabies,
I’m suspended when I find myself needing you
talk to me, tell me any story,
see me.
You don’t have to be alone”

It seems crazy that we have to write about a young band ‘returning’ to simplicity, especially as Tividad and Tucker are still teenagers. But in reality this is not regression but progression. The band have realised that the modern world wants (and forces) young people to grow up unnaturally fast, and while the first self-titled EP was thrashing against this, Before The World Was Big manages to offer a more sustainable and productive antidote. In a weird way, Girlpool have grown up – becoming confident enough to share their dreams and vulnerabilities and in turn galvanise a lonely generation too afraid of ridicule to live the lives they desire.

Before The World Was Big is out now on Wichita Recordings.

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Girlpool is Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad. The pair met at high school and developed their musical aspirations in LA at The Smell, an all ages, drug/alcohol free underground club that has played a part in the career of a number of noise bands (see The Mae Shi, No Age, Abe Vigoda). Unlike the aforementioned bands, Girlpool make relatively simple indie rock music sans drums, relying on their distinctive vocals and cutting lyrics to make the impact. The result is a slightly skewed guitar-driven EP that feels continuously on the verge of spilling over, restrained but for how long?

You can probably guess the main target of this barely restrained fervour from what I’ve already said about the band’s name. Tasked with listening to the “faceless voices of scientists on dictaphone records,” the women of the Vonnegut’s Girl Pool leave their “cloister of cement” only once a year to go “a-carolling” and get chocolate bars at Christmas time. The song ‘Blah Blah Blah’ captures the ridiculousness of the fact that these women (read: any women) are controlled by “anybody with a dictaphone,” i.e. even the most uninspiring, unoriginal, banal men:

“You leave me crying in the fucking rain
I want you
You’re too busy watching other girls
In the little skirts, with their pretty curls
Why don’t you
Hot one you know you want it
Then when you find you got it
You call me

I hear you talking like
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH”

Next song ‘Paint Me Colours’ looks at privilege through the prism of teenage heartbreak: “I’ll never understand what it means to be a man who is white ‘cos he never has to fight.” This grounding of big ideas (racial/gender discrimination) in ‘normal’ things (teen angst) works really well, although of course the big ideas are intrinsically linked with and impact upon normality. ‘Slutmouth,’ opening with the line “sometimes I want to be a boy,” challenges just what ‘normal’ is in our society, dealing with the belittling ‘norms’ such as street harassment (I don’t wanna get fucked / by a fucked society / cos everywhere I look / someone’s blaming me / I don’t really care about the clothes I wear”) and social expectation (“I go to school every day / just to be made a housewife one day”).

The single ‘Jane’ gets back to more hopeful messages. Detailing how the titular character punches a boy called Tommy in the mouth (bear with me). The song implores people in similar situations to heed their advice, a call to arms to all facing inequality, a conviction that things can and will be better:

“Girls and boys if you are listening
Don’t ever feel imprisoned
Feeling like your mouth is glued tight shut.

You were born for a reason
Share all of your feelings
If you are a Jane put your fists up too.”

While I’ve never seen the cloister of cement, or handed out sweets to it’s inhabitants during the holidays, I’m sure the music world has long had it’s own version of the Girl Pool. Picking up where Bikini Kill et al. left off, Girlpool’s music seems like a reaction against this. But it is to their credit that the album isn’t a scream-filled futile rage but instead an assured confidence, a determination to say things as they are. Coupling lyrics of everyday feelings with high-pitched screams of frustration, they come across not as hyperrealistic freedom fighters, but as real people with a just cause, people growing bolder with every small success, people ready to stand up for what is right. Things have changed for the better but the playing field still isn’t level, and the unerring confidence of Tucker and Tividad plays like the hammer blows against any remaining walls of the cloister of cement.

The EP is out now on Wichita Recordings and you can buy it here.

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“People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.”

Tracklisting:

1. One – La Dispute

2. Bosnia – Prairies

3. Apex Of Excitement – Ethan M.

4. Giant Zero – Arrange

5. Most Of Us Are Maniacs Through Which The Universe Is Looking At Itself – Bewildered Hallelujah

6. Greywolf – USF

7. Dream. – of Architects

8. Her Favourite Song – Birkwin Jersey

9. Thin City – Matthew A. Wilkinson

10. Witch Dream – Dustin Wong

11. Waterpunches – PhaRo

12. I Felt Like I Understood It – Stupid Loser

13. I Saw A Body Floating Above Jerusalem – Cuddle Formation

14. Phthalo Blue – Lone

15. Black Hole – Man Meets Bear

16. Robot 30931 Feel Existential Despair – Neat Beats

17. Mrs Morris – Charles Spearin

18. Light At The End Of The Tunnel – Cloud Cult

19. Like Totally – Gold Panda

20. Have You Passed Through This Night? – Explosions In The Sky

As usual this mix is meant as a small taster, go out and support the bands by buying music and going to shows.

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