California is so in right now. Following the breakthroughs of bedroom noisemakers Wavves and Girls, among others, West Coast rock hasn't seen this much attention since Black Flag and the Minutemen roamed the coast. Indie culture has swelled around the geographically prominent lo-fi geyser, fully embracing the characteristically ramshackled processes and the ambiguity of chaos. Music's cyclical history has clearly shown, though, that if anything, this spells the beginning of the end. Increased exposure designates a fleeting, special flavor by creating a public swimming pool of sounds.
Seemingly every band has its hand in the distortion pedal pond, and as Garreth Campesinos! wisely put it, ""Stamping harder on your fx pedal won't make you feel any better anymore."" It takes more than distorted aesthetic to stick out these days, but individuality comes in many shapes and sizes. Take, then, Toronto's Little Girls. Their latest release, Concepts, is an album so desperately longing for California's beach rays that it goes so far as to submerge itself in its ocean from 2,500 miles away.
Little Girls play to their strengths with perpetually rolling guitars. Their churning chords work like dairy farmers, but their efforts tend to get washed up in the sonic hullabaloo. The production value ultimately makes the proverbial butter in this scenario so aqueous that each pulsating chord grinds itself into more of a soup than a suitable bread topping.
The group's high water mark comes right away on lead track ""Youth Tunes."" Layers of guitars crash over each other and build sizable momentum before the tide recedes and the chords are left to start over from the sedimentary rubble. Their lyrics are indecipherable throughout Concepts, but on ""Youth Tunes"" it's clear they're not calling for help. They're underwater, but they're meant to be there.
Concepts is a surf rock album thoroughly drenched in noise. Although the studio can be used as a beneficial instrument, it's more of a deterrent for Little Girls. Whatever innocuous statement they mutter, the vocals' grimy aesthetic sinks any meaning behind the trudging melody. Their attempt at echolocation gets lost in translation, bouncing off of too much choral and seaweed to retain substantive value. It would seem as though they're using their filthy production value to hide the fact that they don't actually have anything to say, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now because what minimal message they do get across is received warmly.
However, a benefit of the doubt isn't a saving grace, and Little Girls is a band that doesn't need to stay in the basement. Their sharp guitars and throaty vocals are warm enough that they don't need a cloak to go out in public. It almost seems like they're ashamed of themselves, holing up and taking a dive just when the waves are about to hit their peak, refusing to open up enough to be received. There's an art to keeping your cards close to your chest, but at times it's almost as if Little Girls have exchanged their cards for a wetsuit.
That undercover aspect is the crux of Little Girls' paradox. Their name emits an air of immaturity, and if we think of it in terms of raw potential then it's an apt descriptor. They paddle just a little too far offshore, and Concepts suffers for it. They're caught in the undertow and they haven't yet found a way to squeeze Little Girls between Vivian Girls, Screaming Females, Parenthetical Girls or just plain Girls without conforming to the California zeitgeist. They do their own originality and ambition a disservice by being overly adventurous in a shared reservoir. I don't mean to suggest that Little Girls don't belong, because they do; but they need to carve out their own path in ambivalent surf distortion before we can justifiably recognize them as not just contemporaries of the scene, but as a band worth noting at the tip of the tide instead of merely at the mercy of it.
