| With this radioactive green cassette, you'll get three new girlfriends who like
to hang out in dusty basements, make noise and yell at you. Oh, and two of them
are guys. Maybe not the ideal romantic situation, but it makes for an excellent,
bopping, in-your-face, giddy garage-punk trio. The menage a trois is a coalition
of other lauded local acts. Singer and guitarist Ben Portrykus fronted the folk
philosophers Christians & Lions, bassist Jen Dowty was formerly from Mmoss and
drummer Andrew Sadoway played with Mean Creek and also backs up Spirit Kid.
The DIY-enthusiast, lo-fi production has a cavernous live sound that
remarkably maintains every note and lyric. A fuzzed-out guitar flirts with
genres and expectations, meandering through feedback, rock 'n' roll melodies,
surfy riffs and punk power chords. There's an inventiveness that mostly comes
from a sarcastic humor in everything from the sound down to the catch-phrase,
"nothing is fuuucked!" printed on the neon cassette. A spacey pedal solo on
"Good to Be True" could easily be a wacked-out vocoder and the song ends with an
off-key falsetto. It's a juxtaposition of childlike playfulness and hardcore
punk rock, like getting your ass kicked by an 8 year old. In "Sucking Rare Meat
off a Bone China," a masturbation joke: "I found that touching so I touched it /
now my palms went hairy / I'm blind," comes right after turning Gandhi on his
head, "an 'I' for an 'I' makes the whole world 'yours' and 'mine.'"
Lyrics even take music to task for credibility, like good punk rock should.
"I Was Here But I Disappear" challenges pop to a duel with "the same bands play
the same shows every night," and "it's just pretty songs by pretty people and
it's tough for me to give a shit / Have I failed hedonistic calculus?" As a good
girlfriend should, this too-short, five-track EP will leave you satisfied, but
hurting for more. (Floating Garbage Continent)
http://www.girlfriendstheband.com | 
