The Albums That Matter: Album

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Album

Girls

2009

Okay, so the first thing I thought of writing about when it comes to the great Album was how it's the perfect sunny California beach album. I didn't know how to wring a whole lot out of that one though, especially after looking at Wikipedia. The critics already got all that correctly in 2009. "It's simple and forthright early Beach Boys stuff: compact guitar-jangles, sha-la-la harmonies, muffled heartbeat drums," one critic said. Right on the fucking money. And said a lot better than I ever could.

The next thing I thought about writing was about where I was in my life when this album came out. But I can't really think of anything too significant that's attached to this album in my mind. I could even quote what I wrote about it on my Top Ten printed in the school newspaper in 2009: "Life is simple for Girls: 'I wish I had a beach house / I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine.' Yeah, your ex-girlfriend might suck, but life is good all the same." I mean, c'mon. Clearly I didn't know how to write about Album in 2009 either. (I even fucked up the goddamn lyrics I quoted. They're backwards.)

I could wonder a bit out loud about cults, that might be a decent hook. Girls frontman Christopher Owens was born into a cult called the Children of God, and their Wikipedia page paints a pretty bad picture of those people. I'm trying to connect the dots here: Owens escaped the cult at age sixteen, while in Slovenia, somehow made it to Amarillo, TX, and then years later ended up making an album of dreamy California surf rock. It's fascinating. I have to assume that, because the cult really restricted music intake, Owens just splurged on everything he missed when he was finally free. Owens described himself as "angry." Rightly so! Sheesh.

So anyways, those are all things about this band and this album that interest me. It really fascinates me, the listening experience of an album. How the music itself and the experiences of the creator and the experiences of the listener all blend together to create something really neat.

But I've talked about that before too, so fuck it. I dunno. Give me a break. It's a good album, it's called Album, go check it out.

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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Big Bad Mean Mother Fucker"

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Stray Observations

• My favorite bit of Girls trivia that I didn't even bothering trying to expound on above is that, in 2009, when you googled simply the word "girls," then this band was the first hit. Prior to that, Playboy.com was the first hit. And these days, obviously, the (mostly excellent) HBO show Girls covers the first page of results. But man, 2009, it was a golden year.
• FRONT COVER: a split screen of four different images, two of Owens (probably?), and two of flowers. If I remember correctly, one or more of the videos for songs off this album were also split screens, with four different stories playing out through the course of the song. I don't want to look it up to confirm, because I remember very specifically a few exposed, erect penises in the one video, and I'm at work, so...
• Other famous Children of God escapees: Joaquin Phoenix, Rose McGowan.
• I had this album ranked at #4 in my 2009 Top Ten, in case you are wondering. It's okay if you weren't. Making a 2009 list now, I'd probably keep Dragonslayer at #1, knock Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and The Hazards of Love out of the Top Three, move Aim and Ignite to #2, and put Album at #3.
• Owens is apparently in a band now called Curls, working on new music. This band existed before Girls too, though. Hence, I guess, the song "Curls" on Album.

NEXT TIME: Album by the Sun Days