Remember how the internet was supposed to make albums extinct? Around the turn of the century, serious-minded pop scholars were telling us that listeners would stop caring about compendiums of songs with pre-designed tracklists and conceptual underpinnings. The online world was supposed to free us from the tyranny of 50-minute bulks of music. We would now only be concerned with gloriously succinct, stand-alone tunes. But that hasn't happened. There's still an expectation that makers of songs need to group them together into LPs and EPs at some point, even if those songs wind up suffering in the process.
One band that doesn't benefit from the album format is Glaswegian indie pop trio Golden Grrrls. The band's full-length debut comes after a series of 7-inch and cassette-only releases that presented Golden Grrrls' modest, pared-down charms in appropriately modest, pared-down packages. As guitarist Ruari MacLean acknowledged in a 2012 interview, Golden Grrrls derive their sound from "classic American indie stuff" and "also a lot of Flying Nun/Kiwi pop stuff." That much is obvious from a cursory listen to Golden Grrrls, which is built on MacLean's buzzed-up riffs and flat, deadpan monotone playing off the surprisingly intricate (but always novice-level simple) instrumentation and backing vocals supplied by guitarist Rachel Aggs and drummer Eilidh Rodgers.
When heard in two or three-song bunches, Golden Grrrls sounds great; opening track "New Pop" is 110 seconds of chest-bursting guitars and charming boy-girl vocals giggling and making eyes at each other. The next song "Past Tense" offers more of the same: a chirpy melody, slipshod rhythms, low-key (and off-key) harmonies. By the third track "Paul Simon" (the legendary singer-songwriter is surely referenced for his jangly, pre-Bridge Over Troubled Water Simon & Garfunkel hits, not his more adult-oriented solo material) the formula has already been strongly reiterated and not at all elaborated upon.
If Golden Grrrls had ended there, it would've been another pleasurably slight and bite-sized entry in the band's discography. But even though the next eight songs only last about 20 minutes, the rest of Golden Grrrls feels much longer. There are some good songs here: "Think of the Ways" is a delicate beauty, and "We've Got…" brings the record to a reliably breezy conclusion. But Golden Grrrls was born to make 7-inches; this band needs to say its peace and leave, not linger while the buzz wears off. The bursts of bright energy and amateurish enthusiasm on Golden Grrrls shine on wondrously for several minutes, but after a while the limitations of stunted musicianship and repetitive songwriting take over. What Golden Grrrls screams out for is a haunting ballad or an experimental, noisy detour or two-- anything to add variety to what is otherwise a stiflingly samey album. In lieu of that, an unsparing editor would've sufficed.
