Little Girls — Concepts

Concepts

Paper Bag/Universal

10/30/2009 1:48pm

Digging lo-fi has little to do with being able to tolerate fuzz in an effort to find some sort of hidden payoff. Consider Condo Fucks, Times New Viking and Wavves — these are bands whose albums sound good because of their rough edges, not in spite of them.

Little Girls are not like these bands. There's plenty of fuzz and distortion on Concepts, but it adds little to the disc's enjoyability. Creator Josh McIntyre's vocals never make it above the level of a monotonous moan and are essentially of no use. He has talked about certain themes appearing in this music — predominantly nostalgia and aging, but it's impossible to tell if this is true because you can't make out a word the guy's saying.

We're lucky, then, that he has an ear for what it takes to put together a memorable tune. With or without the fuzz, the music on Concepts is undeniably catchy.

This album is a fun ride, but not because it's lo-fi. I guess we haven't much right to complain. If McIntyre cleaned up his music, we'd be back to the pretentiously pristine pop that drove us to this fuzzy mess of a genre in the first place.

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