Girls - Concert Review (The Earl, Atlanta 2/5/10)

How’s this for a new twist on the old coming-of-age narrative? Christopher Owens was raised in a 60’s-spawned pseudo-Christian sex-crime-promoting cult called the Children of God by a globetrotting mom so brainwashed that she let one of her own sons die of pneumonia because the cult didn’t believe in hospitals. At 16, Owens escaped to Texas, where he worked for minimum wage and got into the local punk scene before a local millionaire took a liking and brought him out to San Francisco. While living there, Owens teamed up with guitarist Chet “JR” White, started a band called Girls, and released their debut record Album (2009)—an LP that caught both critics and fans by storm, earning them a spot among last year’s breakout indie darlings.

This stranger-than-fiction saga is no gimmick, but seeing Owens perform live—this little grungy guy in his red sweater and skinny jeans, long matted hair gleaming greasily in the colored lights—you immediately get the impression that there’s something going on beneath his slipshod veneer. While his comparatively clean-cut bandmates smile and seem to enjoy the jangly, often buoyant melodies they’re generating, Owens grasps the mic tightly, eyes closed and face screwed up like somebody who just got his finger slammed in the car door. Or like somebody who’s dealt with a lot of pain in his 30 years of life.


The sold-out show illustrated how quickly Girls have gained popularity in the past few months. The Earl does not usually sell out. People are excited about Girls, and at a small venue usually reserved for lesser-known up-and-comers, the audience felt particularly eager to engage with the artists. Following two opening bands that Owens dubbed his “myspace dream team”—prepubescent garage-rockers Smith Westerns and exuberant hipster-glam indie-poppers Magic Kids—Girls kicked off their set with a nice true-to-form delivery of jaunty post-break-up apology single “Laura.”

Owens’ maintained a rather visceral reserve throughout his performance. Each song was followed by a meekly humble “thank you,” as he crooned his way through the characteristically convivial dysphoria of Album. The eager audience sang along with a notably stirring rendition of “Hellhole Ratrace” and attempted to start a mosh pit in the throes of giddy pre-encore closer “Lust for Life.”

Girls deftly bulked up their small but potent catalogue with new track “Heartbreaker” (“a song about how people suck”), and B-sides “Life in San Francisco” (“when all your friends are self-centered eccentric weirdo junkies”) and “Substance” (“this song is about drugs, which, if anyone has any, please give them to us”).

Overall, the show did not set off any fireworks, but it was moving and enjoyable, and well played for a band that is more prone to individual emotions than theatrics. Girls proved that they’ve earned their credibility, not through gimmicks or showmanship or even Owens’ ubiquitous back-story, but through a rare ability to meld opposites, to create an authentically rendered contrast between the bright and the broken, the harmonious and the dissonant, the good times and the suck-fests. And who can’t relate to that?

Review by Hilary Cadigan
Photos by Max Blau