Girlpool’s Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad have relocated to Philadelphia since I saw the duo play at the Echo during their very successful Monday residency last December. However, they were celebrating the release of their new album ‘Before the World Was Big’ at Amoeba on June 2nd and I can tell that their howling harmonies haven’t changed a bit from what I remember.
Observing them in daylight, the two girls appeared very young (they are still in their teens), while I was myself surrounded by teenager girls, looking a bit like them and attentively drinking all the duo’s harmonies. Girlpool’s music is unbelievably stripped down, they just use a guitar and a bass that they sometimes exchange, but the main element of their songs has to be their vocal harmonies, omnipresent during their songs, with a sort of fierce girl-power-girl-riot attitude. ‘We are a punk band’ they said at one point, although their songs are rather slow and install a sort of melancholia deep inside these top-of-the-lungs entertwined voices. It’s minimalism with the biggest effect, lo-fi genre for empowerment, and the punk attitude is entirely in the lyrics.
And there’s something so artisanal and DIY in their attitude, they arrived with a school notebook in which they write their setlists as if they were entries for their common girl dairies. During the whole set, the two girls seemed so in phase with each other, having some funny and almost intimate chatting between the singing parts, and totally connecting during the songs, looking like two perfect accomplices.
Like the old ones, the new songs sound like some delightful, clever and funny pieces, so interesting you want to hear all the lyrics: ‘Do you feel restless when you realize you’re alive?/Looking back on November, you could paint me anyway/I’m still looking for surness in the way I say my name/I am nervous for tomorrow and today/Cut my hair when I’m feeling like I don’t have a place/And the mirrors reflection pushes me further away’… they sang in ‘Chinatown’, translating adolescence awkwardness and malaise (and beyond) so well, that you understand why they are so many young girls front row, silently watching, mouth closed and with wide-opened eyes. On the other hand, Cleo Tucker was often closing her eyes very tight to push these unison harmonies to the top and produce these guitar stings.
There is something so child-like and playful in their apparently-so-simple music, something so sweet too, but at the same time something so tragic, given us a glimpse to the experience of growing up in an uncertain and scary world, ‘I just miss how it felt standing next to you/Wearing matching dresses before the world was big,’ they sang in the title track of their new album. This promises to be an album filled with raw emotions but they do it with slow rhythms and without even screaming. However, the two girls stayed very upbeat despite the heartbreaking honesty behind their songs, saying they were giving away mixed tapes they had made with FYF, before singing more songs of their ‘Before the World Was Big’ LP… and these are probably the real songs of innocence.
Setlist
Ideal world
Chinatown
Paint Me Colors
I like that You Can See it
Magnifying Glass
Crowded Stranger
Dear Nora
Before the World Was Big
Emily
Cherry Picking
