Girls – Laura
You might not have expected us to like this. Well, guess what…
[Myspace]
[4.20]
Edward Okulicz: Welcome back, The Bluetones! Why do you have such a horrible singer now?
[2]
Alex Macpherson: Bad Britpop jangle with a hint of insufferable croaking freakfolk affectation in the voice. Could easily pass for Shed Seven or, like…who were the really, really bad one? Dodgy? Cast? It’s that awful.
[1]
Martin Skidmore: A horrible vocal wrecks a pleasantly bouncy old-fashioned West Coast pop number. His strangled nasal whine is really unpleasant, but despite perky enough playing and an approximation of a tune, when it doesn’t wander off the point in a too-many-spliffs way, I don’t think this lot would be a new Beach Boys even with a great singer. With this one they are pretty much unlistenable.
[1]
Chuck Eddy: For a singer and songwriter who I gather has a rep as a major weirdo thanks to his Jesus Freak upbringing, Christopher Owens sure does come off as a totally run-of-the-mill wimp here. Give or take his clogged adenoids, what is supposed to set him apart?
[3]
Alfred Soto: I’ve been more ambivalent about this album than any other released in the second half of the year. It’s an achievement to puree and serve Graham Parker and Elvis Costello as teen fodder; on the other hand, the teen fodder, unmediated by irony, makes me squirm, especially since I’m no fan of Animal Collective’s stabs at approximating the uninhibited melodrama that supposedly makes teenage emotion the sine qua non of Being Alive. But where Animal Collective is abstruse and therefore grotesque, this is specific and merely gross. Girls would rather pin down those teenage emotions instead of evoking them, and I’d rather squirm while remembering them than skip to the next track.
[8]
John M. Cunningham: The first couple of times I heard “Laura,” I thought the verses sounded a bit like the Dismemberment Plan’s “Following Through.” Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother mentioning such a tenuous resemblance, except for the fact that a) Dan Weiss made the same observation, and b) Christopher Owens is such a rock and roll magpie, it’s plausible it’s a half-cloaked tribute. But then again, those straight, jaunty guitar chords could just as well be inspired by “Sweet Caroline”. And besides, that’s not even what I like most about this, which is the way Owens’s wounded voice plays off the song’s carefree, sun-kissed bounce. Or maybe it’s the gorgeous indulgence of the coda.
[7]
Anthony Easton: R Kelly redux, and people who know more about this than I do will tell me I am wrong, but I still find it as seductive as hell.
[7]
Ian Mathers: Sure, this hits lots of classic rock/indie sonic and songwriting tropes, but it hits them gracelessly (and at least half of them I hate anyway). This sounds like it could fit on the last couple of Wilco albums, and that isn’t a compliment.
[2]
Alex Ostroff: I normally have trouble approaching acts that have been as hyped as Girls. Staggeringly high expectations are rarely met, and have a tendency to obscure bands’ actual merits. Somehow, “Laura” bypasses this. While I don’t hear the work of a genius here, the weight of Christopher Owens’ much-cited biography fails to crush the appeal of his pleasant and melodic songcraft. The music is sunny and AM-radio-inflected. The vocals have character, albeit by way of This Year’s Model-era Costello. If an elaborate backstory was necessary to direct me to this unassuming gem, so be it – everyone needs a hook.
[8]
Doug Robertson: A less energetic answer to McFly. Although I really, really don’t want to know what the actual question was.
[3]
At last — I have indie cred!
lolz at Easton’s Dream blurb finding its way to this!
I think minus that review, this trends down to a 3.5?
really good band & album, unfortunate as this is probably the most meandering and boring track on the album
Alex Ostroff, you need to find your copy of This Year’s Model immediately – there’s not a speck of late 70s Costello here (I really hope Alfred is referring to later stuff).
Here I was figuring Anthony Easton just had a much drier sense of humour than I do with that blurb!
there’s not a speck of late 70s Costello here (I really hope Alfred is referring to later stuff).
Absolutely concur with this. I saw a Costello comparison somewhere on line, and couldn’t figure out how it was dreamed up, so my conclusion was that it probably meant after Goodbye Cruel World, when I got really bored and stopped paying attention (or at very least, nothing before Imperial Boredom.) Curious what era of Graham Parker Alfred’s referring to, too — The Mona Lisa’s Sister? The Real Macaw? Not that I have any idea what those sound like. Has to be something from the ’80s, though — there’s no pub rock to be found here at all, unfortunately.
Parker and Costello’s voices.
I spent most of the week flip-flopping between whether I heard more of My Aim is True or This Year’s Model here, and perhaps it doesn’t matter. It’s not the instrumentals, the punk/new wave/whatever, it’s the voice, which mimics his vocal tics and his tone. The casual callousness with which he address her also scans early Costello to me, but even if he were singing about nuclear reactors or the care of animals, his voice would evoke the comparison. I don’t understand how people don’t hear it.
seriously tho’ Anthony, that blurb was meant for The Dream, right?
The Costello comparison is valid, though I think “adenoidal Conor Oberst” would be more evocative of the overall effect.
Yeah, I didn’t get Costello vocally at all, and I still don’t hear it now. Conor Oberst in dire need of a sudafed is more like it.
Also, This Year’s Model is one of my favourite albums of all time and this song is a pile of shit, so I apologize for getting shirty about it.
yes.
Yeah this is the worst track on the album by a long way.
[...] – Laura [...]
K glad I’m not the only one who sensed a little “Sweet Caroline”
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