Girls | Unknown Mortal Orchestra March 9, 2012

It’s rare to find something as true and beautiful as the band Girls. Listening to their music, it’s as though Christopher Owens and JR White were meant to find each other, sincere rock and roll soul mates in the age of irony. And while that might sound like fancy, it’s closer to the truth than you think.“If you’re going to San Francisco…”Just as the Velvets crackled with New York City electricity and Smiths’ songs came soaked in Manchester drizzle, so the music of Girls captures the stoned and sun-brushed outlook of life in San Francisco. Taking the classic California pop template perfected by Brian Wilson and applying a woozy, narcotic makeover, Girls make music that sincerely glorifies adolescence - a youth of hopeful confusion and love strong enough to hurt you. You’ll detect 50’s surf-pop, 60’s psychedelia and 80’s shoe-gaze at play here – the West Coast-by-way-of-somewhere-else; but ultimately San Francisco washes over this music.