Pitchfork

Seattle glam-punks The Girls aren't interested in burying their influences, assimilating them, or updating them for the internet era; their Dirtnap debut is an unabashed encomium (one might even say "parody," were it not such an obvious labor of love) to a new-wave now old enough for mid-life crises and lower back pain. It's a hi-fi facsimile: the black and white grid of faces and neon-pink cursive that mark the album's cover hark back to the "garish is good" aesthetic of the late 70s/early 80s-- only to be outdone by the back cover, which boasts sunglasses, black ties, sleeveless dress shirts, and everyone gazing into the middle distance toward, presumably, The Future, where everything occurs against a Tron-like backdrop; where Max Headroom is George Bush to Spuds McKenzie's Dick Cheney; where Belinda Carlisle toils in obscurity while Gary Numan's Tubeway Army rake in major moon-bucks. Inside, there's a picture of The Girls applying their eyeliner in a mirror. Are you feeling me yet? What I'm saying is, they ain't fuckin' around.

But this is no fishnet-hawking electroclash fashionista rock; besides having more sexxx appeal than both Coreys combined, The Girls've got chops like Ralph Macchio. Those of you who know The Cars and The Voidoids can guess what you're in for; for you young'uns, I'll say this: The Girls sound kind of like Stellastarr* (I mean that in a nice way), yet hew more closely to new-wave roots than the more indie rocking Stellas, viz. punchy simplicity over grandiose anthem rock.

Vocally: foppish and fey, staccato yelps and hiccups, words padded with more syllables than anything that isn't a British manor has the right to contain (example: "stereo" inevitably becomes "ster-e-ah-e-ah-e-o"). Lyrically: classic Information Age gobbledygook, designed less to convey information about the modern world than to describe its accumulation of surface and signal via verses that rely more on allusive phonetic similarity than actual narrative (example: on "She's Hysterical": "Schematics, schematics/ Mechanical reaction/ Schematics, schematics/ You're in love with your reflection/ Oh no, she's gonna blow!"). Guitars: sleek and buzzing, all sculpted slides and reedy fuzz chords. Rhythm section: crisp and spare, skeletal-- witness the analog man striving toward the pristine precision of the drum machine. (And of course) Synths: and plenty of them, clean and lambent melodic lines fresh from the can, clarion call for the UFO set, gloriously artificial bubbles glowing like fluorescents.

I'd be remiss to not mention "Dope Disguised as Nuns". It's about... okay, remember that Saturday Night Live commercial parody about monkeys that clean your bathroom? Where the monkey writes, "Monkey hate clean" on the bathroom mirror with lipstick? That was funny, right? It seems The Girls agree: The song seems, in all seriousness, to be about that sketch. I'm still confused. I'm not going to insult your intelligence with some dubious tie-in to the rest of The Girls' oeuvre-- I mean, that skit isn't even from the right era of SNL.