Of the litany of complaints that doctors and educators have made about the tolls of the technological age on American youth, one of the most prominent is the obvious shortening of our national attention span. But if Father, Son, Holy Ghost, the sophomore album from San Francisco indie duo Girls, meets any kind of acclaim or success, our nation can rest easy that many of its youngsters are superhumanly attentive—because getting through Holy Ghost’s tediously repetitive 57 minutes in one sitting is enough to make anyone feel like a fifth grader trapped in Catechism.
Which is sad, really, because it gets off to such a promising start. First track “Honey Bunny” is immediate and infectious, rife with the band’s characteristic twangy electric guitars and bouncing ‘60s surf-pop beats that have fun, fun, fun, ‘til vocalist Christopher Owens takes the quick tempo away. The pocket of slow calm towards the middle is interesting in its unexpectedness, but not so much that the listener is disappointed when the track reaccelerates for its finish.
But the unexpectedness ends there. And as the album goes on, what started as fun and retro quickly reverts to tracks sounding straight off Girls’ debut, 2009’s Album, which alternate without much musical inflection between praises of beautiful love and elegiac laments of when it went wrong, all of which are doo-wop-y enough to come out of the overture of a hipster version of Grease. Only this overture plays for the entire musical.
But at the very least, Holy Ghost gives the impression that the band is at least trying—albeit failing—to branch out. Virtually every song has at least a minute or two of something that deviates from their last album’s sound that, despite not being the most pleasant composition, at least breaks up what would otherwise resemble an hour stuck in a California elevator. The most radically different of these is “Die,” which, for its first two minutes of heavy, competing guitar riffs, wailing solos, and pessimistic lyrics, sounds straight out of 1970s pretentio-rock. But in a twist that shouldn’t surprise anybody, it soon degenerates into what sounds like a different song entirely. Unfortunately, that song is the band’s two-year-old hit “Hellhole Rat Race.”
This pattern continues to pop up throughout the album, from “Vomit,” which starts off with a slow guitar and barely-whispered vocals that regrettably hearken Bright Eyes, to an incongruous, emphatic gospel singer, who takes the place of those doo-wop background vocals on this track and album closer “Jamie Marie.”
And if you make it all the way to the album’s finish without falling asleep or ripping out your headphones in growing frustration at monotonous song after song of love gone lost, then congratulations—you’re an anomaly of your generation.
There are no back up vocals on Jamie Marie. what’s a California elevator?