Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost
4.5 out of 5
The story of Christopher Owens has been told in numerous stories about his Christian upbringing which limited the amount of ‘culture’ that he was able to absorb. The back story is great for Wikipedia and for the novice who has no idea of who ‘Girls’ are. And while I should not say that it is easy for a band to come out with a critically acclaimed debut album, it is more difficult to come out with a successful sophomore effort.
‘Father, Son, Holy Ghost’ does not invent rock and roll but remembers it. This album is every rock LP that you own from the 70s without being cliché. Whether you can hear elements of surf rock (Honey Bunny) or Pink Floyd (Vomit) the album succeeds by not replicating these sounds but still sounds organic in its own right.
Father, Son, Holy Ghost digs through a plethora of the 60’s and 70s sounds without being pigeonholed into one distinct genre. Christopher Owen’s nasally “Elvis Costello” vocals on their debut seemed to have disappeared on this album
The surf rock ‘Honey Bunny’ is that open letter to the woman of his dreams that loves him for all his shortcomings and sets the tone for this album.
Thematically, we are still stuck on the love theme and while critics might look to this and say that love is such a broad topic to discuss in music, it gets a bit overdone at times.
What rock and roll is still great at is creating self-loathing which seems to be a male-dominated pastime. Even I can admit that there was part of me raising my hand when Owens claims about girls: “they don’t love my bony body”. You would think that the rock star gets all the girls but why is it that most of the shows that I go to have a greater guy to girl ratio? The girl that Owens is looking for is fictitious and the guys that go to rock shows listening to bands such as this and buying this crap, boy it would nice for someone to just accept me for who I am.
I had read somewhere that the last song on the album ‘Janie Marie’ is the Randy Newman-tune, at which case Owens and company need to sign a contract with Disney. Going back to the title of this album, we speak to the father, son and holy ghost most often when there is a moment to confess on Janie Marie, it’s his prior actions.
Lastly, the iconic ‘Vomit’ brings us to one of the great rock and roll tunes in the last year. In it’s 70’s glory, ‘Vomit’ is that sloppy love letter written at three in the morning. It’s not eloquent. Its written on spiral paper ripped out of the notebook in three different colors of ink with scratches and doodles along the way. It’s the centerpiece of this amazing album bringing so much of the 70s together without sounding recycled. That is hard because it’s an impossible task to sound authentic and at the same time borrow something. Often times, when you borrow something you end up looking like Molly Ringwald’s prom dress in Pretty in Pink. Here, Owens salutes his idols but gives himself a stage to stand on.