On its sophomore album, Horsegirl strips its sound again to post-punk fundamentals.
Ruby Faye
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Ruby Faye
When Horsegirl launched its debut Variations of Trendy Efficiency again in 2022, it was clear the trio — nonetheless in or simply out of highschool on the time — possessed all of the marks of a Cool Band. Claiming critically adored, crate-dug bands like Electrelane, Belle and Sebastian and My Bloody Valentine as favourite teams and references for its sound in interviews? Test. Communicate-sung lyrics crammed with nods to The Jesus and Mary Chain and Gang of 4? Test. Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley casually enjoying on the band’s debut? Test! If there was a knock in opposition to Horsegirl, it was that each one these trendy touchstones may muddle a standpoint the band was nonetheless working to seek out, on the heart. On the band’s sophomore album Phonetics On & On, Penelope Lowenstein, Nora Cheng and Gigi Reece as a substitute strip all of it again to concentrate on what actually issues: the ability of conserving issues playful.
Phonetics On & On is a compulsively replayable file filled with arrestingly catchy, bare-bones songwriting and twee treasures. If Horsegirl summoned a tsunami of darkish, shoegaze sound on its debut, right here the band strips every part again to the post-punk fundamentals, swapping extinguishing reverb for tightened manufacturing that emphasizes every member of the group as a person noisemaker. The trio labored with the eccentric Welsh artist Cate Le Bon and you may hear how effectively her art-pop spirit works with Horsegirl. Collectively, they find the right stage of musical restraint that also permits Horsegirl’s to trigger slightly chaos within the margins of those compact songs, like when an electrical guitar solo runs unfastened within the second half of jangly pop opener “The place’d You Go?”
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The very best components of many songs listed below are simply wordless melodies, just like the refrain of the rollicking “Rock Metropolis,” Lowenstein and Cheng’s peppy “woo-hoo-ooh-ooh” line stretched out virtually like a protracted, gradual whistle, or ridiculously easy, addictive tracks like “2468” or “Change Over,” on which Lowenstein and Cheng commerce the lyrics “change over, change off” in rapid-fire. That is unflashy, minimalist music, nonetheless indebted to the band’s retro references, however it would not really feel underdeveloped. It feels intuitive and earnest, made by a band attempting to construct itself from the bottom up by figuring out what’s enjoyable to play, what’s enjoyable to sing, even when that is perhaps a tossed-off, sped-up string of numbers that stayed lodged in my mind lengthy after first play. It is an album that captures the improvisational spirit of being in a room with your pals who’re additionally your bandmates, shortly sketching out concepts into songs with out overthinking it. Usually, it seems like somebody within the band is simply attempting one thing out within the warmth of the tune’s creation — somebody noodling their guitar into no matter path they please, letting a lyric flip into “da-da-da-da.”
There is a childlike, D.I.Y. directness that permeates Phonetics On & On‘s visuals, concepts and intentionally scrappy guitar strains that evokes the spirit of a gaggle like Eighties’ Beat Taking place, who forged its juvenile enjoying practices and lyricism as first thought, finest thought punk liberation. “I had by no means actually touched a violin earlier than,” Cheng advised Rolling Stone about utilizing the instrument at first of “2468.” “It seems like a kids’s recital. However enjoying an instrument you do not know, you get that innocence you can’t pretend.” The final 5 years have additionally seen the rise of a speak-song, post-punk revivalist second in indie rock, dominated by bands like Dry Cleansing, Squid and the Grammy-winning Moist Leg. However whereas most of these acts method the mic with a desert-dry cynicism and wit, there is a nimbleness to Horsegirl’s method right here that all of a sudden makes all of the arty posturing of so lots of its modern friends really feel overworked.
It is Horsegirl’s freedom on this album — not overthinking it, overworking it — that’s really magnetic. Listening to Phonetics On & On, I stored feeling like I had stumbled throughout a gaggle of women enjoying soar rope on some road nook, the playful however coordinated physicality of the music so accessible and seductive it is like a recreation I may soar into, be part of, contribute my very own “la-la-la”s. These are the songs you get whenever you comply with your intestine and delight within the technique of creation, and all its surprises and enjoyable. “We’ve so many errors to make — errors to make with you,” Lowenstein sings on “Julie,” the album’s centerpiece. “You realize I need them too.” In Horsegirl’s world, a mistake is not the top of the world — it is an invite to maintain going, to maintain messing round and create one thing.
