Girlpool - Powerplant

Pitchfork 83

Outside of their native Los Angeles DIY scene, Girlpool first became known for eerie nursery rhymes about standing up to slutshaming and getting eaten out to American Beauty. Still teenagers, the best friend duo of Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad spoke bluntly in dull-knife harmonies and punk primitivism. It was the power of small sounds taking hold. By the arrival of their debut 2015 full-length, Before the World Was Big, their songwriting had turned towards introspection—being young but feeling old, brimming over with equal parts hope and fear, and simply marveling at (to borrow a phrase) how strange it is to be anything at all. With just a guitar, a bass, and two voices, there wasn’t a single place to hide in their music.

Though the intensity of Tucker and Tividad’s bond has always seemed bigger than some percussion and feedback, Girlpool have properly beefed up their sound, recently adding drummer Miles Wintner. In turn, their sophomore LP Powerplant sounds a little more like everyone else, echoing second-wave emo sourness (“Your Heart”), Britpop jangle (“She Goes By”), and classic alt-rock loud-quiet-loudness throughout. But Tucker and Tividad are wise enough not to abandon what makes them distinct—that unsettling magic that exists between them when they sing, the harmonic equivalent of The Shining’s Grady twins. Breeders songs would highlight Kim and Kelley Deal’s telepathic harmonies but were rarely mixed to sound as though the compositions revolved around the voices. Girlpool have fleshed out the music but thankfully, the voice in all its vulnerable forms still sits center stage.

Under the cover of noise, Tucker and Tividad are more comfortable indulging their poetic inclinations. On Before the World Was Big, they would often pair an abstract scene or turn of phrase with tiny mantras (“Do you feel restless when you realize you're alive?” goes their best), before peppering the whole thing with their friends’ names or other lyrical tchotchkes. The proper names and loose imagery remain, but now Girlpool’s lyrics feel less tangible out the gate. The text feels more open to interpretation like, “I know I’m the weekend selling Sunday morning” (from “Kiss and Burn”). Clever one-liners still pop—from, “I’ve had crumbs in a bag in my pocket all week,” on “Corner Store” to, “I faked global warming just to get close to you,” on “It Gets More Blue”—but there’s fewer of them, devoid of Girlpool’s more dogmatic or revealing sensibilities early on.

Certainly there’s less pressure now to hang a song on their lyrics alone. Yet the emotion evoked by their spare words is like crystal behind the fingerpicking that shifts to sludgy feedback, piano lines that add cheery bursts, and drums that fill in around a feast of vocal dissonance. Lead single “123” takes hold about a minute in when Tucker and Tividad start shouting their lines, but it’s a slight drum roll that builds up the stunning, swirling tension just beforehand. “Soup” is the album’s best example of a song that wouldn’t have worked nearly as well on Before the World Was Big; it likely would have been little more than deadpan vocals rising slightly over the course of two minutes, before retreating back to a hopeless whisper about how it turns out life can be a lot. But here when they hit the climax, the guitar lines drop out as they shout, “Can you feel it?” Immediately afterward, a surge of distortion basically answers the question.

In obvious ways, Girlpool’s world has gotten bigger with Powerplant. But the thing about growing up is that the overflowing possibility of it all can make you burrow deeper into personal crevasses, forcing you to consider what you really care about. No longer teenagers, Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad seem no less overwhelmed by the world, but their methods for coping have changed. Noise can help. So can a little opacity. What Girlpool seem to crave is a moment just to be, together. “Tell me you are here/I hope I’ll find you/Static somewhere,” Cleo and Harmony sing as the album closes, their voices finally in clear harmony.

Drowned In Sound 80

While there is a palpable spontaneity about Girlpool’s lyrics, they also exhibit a meticulous nature, as if in their candid descriptions they manage to touch on a wide range of emotions in poetic harmony. Accompanied by just a guitar and bass, they exhume a robust energy, laying scratchy yet melodic vocals in a wall of noise. It functions as an immense yet sparse sound, as showcased by 'Sleepless', where Tucker and Tividad create a sense of drowsy instrumental splashes in just the right areas, heightened by their whisper-like crooning. 'Corner Store' is a skilful blend of big sounds performed with tightened restraint and lyrics that invoke an irreverence encapsulating the millennial age. A corner store transforms into a museum, where every object observed is rife with nostalgic underpinnings.

The real crux and beauty of Girlpool’s sound is in the free-associating, Dylanesque fashion that they manufacture complex songs that come across the ear like simple vignettes. 'Fast Dust' is a crowning melting pot of warbly Sonic Youth-like chords and soft-spoken refrains that invoke a tempered atmosphere of marvel. Tucker and Tividad don’t feel the need to fill in all the blank spaces by blatantly stating the theme of their tunes, and thus their music retains a sense of mystery that is infectious. Metaphors and visionary illusions abound, and the listener is free to complete the puzzle with their own projections. 'Powerplant' is a breezy gallop, full of distinct musings of corporate working life. Once again, the message is direct yet open to interpretation.

The fact that the lyrics are so cryptic seems like a direct response to the legion of people of who felt that Before the World Was Big was some thematic treatise on growing up in the millennial age. We still get vulnerability, stories, and observations, but they are cloaked in much less analytical detail. Tucker and Tividad want the listener to ascribe their own feelings and reflections on the music rather than vice versa. 'High Rise' barely registers over one minute, with the band singing “Someone to fill a paragraph/ Revising stories dreamt in half” over hushed guitars. The duo seem entirely content to supply just enough to spark the imagination, but not to overburden with thorough, microscopic narratives that spoil the guessing game.

Tucker and Tividad not only show off their unparalleled chemistry throughout Powerplant, but their evolution as musicians as well. 'She Goes By' is a consummate example of the band utilising a sensation of judicious guitar work to augment their vocals. It’s a burst of unfettered energy as the duo implement a cavalcade of dissonant harmonies, reminiscent of the roving sounds of The Cranberries. 'It Gets More Blue', quite possibly the best song on the album, is led more by the concurrent voices of Tucker and Tividad, wafting in a synergy that propels them right along the mousy beat. The duo feed off each other in a symbiotic manner, pushing each other to synchronous heights that are hard to come by.

Music is cathartic for Girlpool, allowing them to share their honest expressions while simultaneously allowing the listener to impose their own perceptions. This is a delicate balancing act that takes most artists years to master, but Tucker and Tividad provide enough give and take to make the overall experience one of constant intrigue.

The Guardian 80

(Anti-)

Part twee folk, part ratty punk, California duo Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker make music that’s nostalgic for 90s riot grrrl outfits like the Breeders, while also effusing millennial ennui; Magnifying Glass, from their 2015 debut LP, Before the World Was Big, was 39 frantic seconds of string-plucking and lyrics about wanting to hold the world inside your head, while early single Blah Blah Blah was mostly built around those three words, delivered in a mocking tone. This new record builds on the latent disquiet that bubbles under the surface of Girlpool’s nonchalance. Despite the addition of a full band, it still manages to sound like a collection of lullabies. Your Heart is full of fragile introspection (“I’m louder than the thoughts I think”), Sleepless builds to a muted yet scuzzy climax, and Cornerstone alternates nursery-rhyme cadences with noisy, grungy meltdowns. With only two songs passing the three-minute mark, this is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it angst, but deserving of your attention nonetheless.