The Edge

Girlpool is an anomaly. They shouldn’t work as well as they do. The band is made up of Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad, or, alternatively, their band is made up of a bass, guitar, and two looping, overlapping, powerfully strained voices. This is almost as bare a setup as a band can be, yet they find a way to cast themselves as a larger than life entity. Obviously, there have been duos before that have done the same thing, say the The White Stripes, but instead of magnifying themselves by plugging in and causing a ruckus, they conjure up an honest and vulnerable aura around themselves. They aren’t a band that is pretending that they know everything there is to know about life and where it’s heading. Instead, they craft a brand of strength and vibrancy from their almost courageousness in the face of the future, aka, the largest obstacle in a young life.
Their album, Before The World Was Big, tackles that issue of being afraid of the future, of losing that innocent childhood phase of life, before the world starts to expand and threatens to leave you lost, threatens to cause others to drift away. Two sets of lyrics that perfectly encapsulates the message is “I just miss how it felt standing next to you/wearing matching dresses before the world was big” and “my mind is almost 19/ and I still feel angry.” Anger, frustration, and trying to grasp at this seismic change are the main themes of the album. Combined with their impassioned simple sound, the album comes off as the most genuine album of the year. To strip away all the bravado that usually makes up the music scene and just say you are scared but are trying, is the most admirable quality a musician can hope to achieve.

-Carlos