Average Metacritic score is 79 (21 reviews):
by Girls
Album (True Panther Sounds)
Release Date: September 22
Metacritic Ranking: 90 (n/a)
Pitchfork: 9.1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/arts/ ... .html?_r=1By JON CARAMANICA
Published: September 2, 2009
Girls, the San Francisco duo of Christopher Owens and J R White, arrives with shoulders shrugged, head slightly down. Its debut album, titled “Album” (True Panther Sounds/Matador), is a lean ramble, in no way ostentatious. Knowingly or not, Mr. Owens has the tender brooding of Buddy Holly down cold, with a touch of Elvis Costello’s shakiness in his voice. But “Album” isn’t clean: it’s flayed and ragged and hazy. Like so much of the noise and psychedelia lately infesting the indie-rock underground, underneath the slop lies terrific instincts for clean, artful melody. In that vein “Album” is one of the year’s most bracing pop releases, and one of the best, a devastatingly fresh reframing of the pop songbook. Mr. White lends versatile support on these numbers, which pilfer elementary punk, country-rock and 1950s-vintage shuffles. (A beautiful instrumental with stirring gospel organs is called “Curls.”) But Mr. Owens is the revelation, with deliciously malleable voice and attitude: desperate on “Ghostmouth,” snide on “Lust for Life,” pleading on “Lauren Marie” and on “Hellhole Ratrace, ” just plain old winded. The feelings are complicated but the songs are raw — like templates for others to copy.
