Women Climb Google Ranks

03/12/09 3:53pm

by Zack Vitiello (CHARTattack)

If you type the word "Women" into Google, it yields a staggering 689 million hits. It's pretty impressive then that the MySpace page belonging to an all-male group of experimental noise-rockers from Calgary is the third entry from the top. If nothing else, it says a hell of a lot about the rapid ascent the band have experienced since their inception just over a year ago.

Women have inspired a wave of internet hype with their unique sonic textures that are comprised largely of indelible pop-hooks juxtaposed against gritty distortion and tape hiss. The past year has found Women recording with indie veteran Chad VanGaalen, touring overseas and signing with Jagjaguwar, one of the most stacked record labels in modern independent music.

"So much crazy shit has happened," frontman Patrick Flegel says. "When we were recording, we really weren't thinking about anyone even being remotely interested in what we were doing.

"We were just trying to make an album that we liked. We haven't really had that much time to sit back and absorb it."

The four high school chums looked to their favourite records from the late '70s for inspiration and used old boomboxes, a bunch of analogue tape and some outlandish recording techniques to get the job done.

They recorded guerilla sessions in an outdoor wildlife culvert ("not a cave, but pretty close to a cave," explains Flegel) and a train station ("We just went in the middle of the night, plugged in, laid it down and got out of there"), and Women put the album together with little idea of how the final outcome might sound.

"That's the whole thing about recording," says Flegel. "What you intend to do and what actually ends up happening are usually pretty different.

"A lot of the recording techniques, if you even want to call them that, we didn't really try them out before, so a lot of it was kind of an accident."

While making the album was haphazard at times, Women maintain a sense of cohesiveness by accepting their need for constant musical fluctuation that challenges the Auto-Tuned nature of contemporary pop.

"We all have really short attention spans and tend to get bored with things really quickly," says Flegel. "There were so many things we wanted to do, so we just did everything we wanted and didn't put too much thought into it.

"We didn't want it to sound really clean and over-thought, but we also didn't want it to sound like shit. I still don't feel like we totally did what we set out to do, but it was kind of close."

If the past year is any indication of the direction Women are heading, we can place our bets that 2009 will find them further refining their remarkable sound and getting up to some big things.

Flegel is already anxious to begin work on a new album, but when confronted with the idea of being the band to put the relatively unknown Calgary music scene on the map, he just laughs the notion off with a modest chuckle.

Women play the Horseshoe Tavern on Thursday at 10:10 p.m. as part of the annual CHARTattack/Horseshoe/Canadian Music Week showcase.

Here are their other tour dates:

March 13 Montreal, QC @ The Green Room w/Braids
March 14 Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall Of Williamsburg w/Crystal Stilts
March 15 Washington, DC @ DC9 w/Crystal Stilts
March 16 Lexington, KY @ Al's Bar w/Crystal Stilts
March 17 Jackson, MS @ 121Millsaps w/Crystal Stilts
March 18 Houston, TX @ Rudyards w/Crystal Stilts
March 19 Austin, TX @ Mohawk w/Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, Julie Doiron, Foreign Born and These Are Powers (SXSW)
March 19 Austin, TX @ Ground Control Touring Party (SXSW)
March 19 Austin, TX @ Two Syllable Records Party (SXSW)
March 20 Austin, TX @ Fader Fort (SXSW)
March 22 Dallas, TX @ The Lounge w/Abe Vigoda, Wavves, Pterodactyl and Thee Ohsees
March 23 Norman, OK @ Opolis w/Abe Vigoda
March 24 Lawrence, KS @ 8th St. Taproom w/Abe Vigoda
March 25 Denver, CO @ Rhinecerpolis w/Abe Vigoda
March 26 Albuquerque, NM @ The Launchpad w/Abe Vigoda
March 27 Phoenix, AZ @ Trunk Space w/Abe Vigoda
March 28 Los Angeles, CA @ Spaceland w/Abe Vigoda
March 29 San Diego, CA @ Casbah w/Chad VanGaalen and Herman Dune
March 30 Visalia, CA @ The Cellar Door w/Chad VanGaalen
March 31 San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill w/Chad VanGaalen
April 2 Portland, OR @ Holocene w/Chad VanGaalen
April 3 Seattle, WA @ Chop Suey w/Chad VanGaalen
April 4 Victoria, BC @ Sugar Nightclub w/Chad VanGaalen
April 5 Vancouver, BC @ Wise Hall w/Nu Sensae and Kidnapping
May 24 London, England @ Hoxton Bar & Kitchen
May 25 London, England @ Lexington
May 26 Paris, France @ Nouveau Casino w/Deerhunter
May 28-29 Barcelona, Spain @Primavera Sound
June 2 Bologna, Italy @ Club Lokomotic Festival w/Akron/Family
June 3 Milan, Italy @ Lato B
June 5 Zagreb, Croatia @ Kset
June 6 Prague, Czech Republic @ Chapeau Rouge