album by girls

So I guess this band Girls is getting a lot of love from all corners of the indie-rock scene for their album entitled Album, and the band name and album title coupling places them on the pedestal of most unGoogle-able artists ever.  I don’t know how I feel about Album as a whole yet but the two lead singles (I’m not quite sure if they’re actually both singles, though I’m fairly certain “Lust For Life” is) are pretty great, so great that they might be two of the best songs of the year.  Perfect end-of-summer sunny pop songs that have great sing-along moments.   They’re so straightforward, so catchy, so addictive. The videos are cool, although “Hellhole Ratrace” kinda just looks like an American Apparel commercial or something.

The story of the band’s frontman is pretty unbelievable as well.  I’m not 100% sure it’s true, but this comes from the adoring 9.1/10 Pitchfork review:

Girls frontman Christopher Owens grew up in the Children of God cult. His older brother died as a baby because the cult didn’t believe in medical attention. His dad left. He and his mother lived around the world, and the cult sometimes forced his mother to prostitute herself. As a teenager, Owens fled and lived as a Texas gutter-punk for a while. Then a local millionaire took Owens under his wing, and Owens moved to San Francisco. There, he and Chet “JR” White formed Girls, and recorded Album, their debut album, under the influence of just about every kind of pill they could find.