Customer Reviews

Looking Into It

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The music of 'Looking Into It' ranges from metal-ish, to twee-ish, to punk-ish, to indie-ish, to surf-ish, to a lot more ishes. I do not say "ish" because distinct styles are watered down, but because they are adapted. When the AGSFB ad-apts a style, they ad[d] it to their music and make it apt.*

I don't want to accidentally suggest this album is a sort of universal pop-rock, with some of everything; it does not do everything, just many things. The band makes liberal use of vocal harmonies, which the experts will tell us can be traced back to surf rock and girl pop. And the band makes liberal use of stiff drumbeats that decline to even hint at swinging even when playing midtempo triplets, which stiffness I would tell you can be traced back through indie sensibilities to the 80s scene's obsession with robots -- but you wouldn't believe me, so I won't. Moreover I wouldn't believe it either, because Kathy Foster's and Kim Baxter's drumming is too deviant to be boxed up with the 80s fauxbots and too raucously rolling to fit in with the indie kids. I don't normally think of this as a style I like, but in fact I love this album.

The topics of the songs range much more widely than boys/girls/summertime. One song treats irreconcilable differences; e.g. the lyrics: "If all my tears could turn to snow, I'd build you someone new, someone who deserves you." Another song rides the tension between novelty and lasting relationships. Another, reminiscent of earlier AGSFB music, is about accidentally falling in love with a boy who doesn't call back, maybe because he's shy, maybe because he's not interested. A few are expressions of disorientation, rendered in the first or second person. (This generation seems to experience mid-life crises well before mid-life.) A few songs are sweet love songs, one of which is also happy. One, at least, is an elegy.

A few songs are pleasantly combative, or argumentative, about, uh, cultural values, as in: "'This isn't something you should know. This isn't something you should feel.' They just confuse themselves with fear. It keeps you near, it keeps you near. 'This isn't something you can say.' Your list gets longer every day! Confusing love with disarray -- it keeps you near, it keeps you near." Note the internal quote marks. It is an argument against sterility and conformity (prohibition), one I find cuts equally sharp against homophobes and scenesters. Some critics have declared the AGSFB regressive, non-empowered women because they were willfully cutesy; those critics missed, in my opinion, the fact that the sign of equality is freedom from the need to make a statement of equality. Indeed this is a common tension in feminism. Elders of the movement fought hard to get out of the kitchen (so to speak), and now that women are free to choose, some nonetheless choose roles that had been traditionally assigned to women, which freaks out the elders.** To my mind, those critics criticizing the AGSFB were just another group of people telling women how to behave. To suggest, as a major music magazine did back in 2002, that the AGSFB "knowingly plays up to" "patronizing bulls--t" because they sell a girly vibe, is to suppose that the audience can only look upon the adolescent experience in some bad way (the magazine even mentioned pedophilia). So I guess that means portrayal of the adolescent perspective is off limits? Who is devaluing who[m] here? I have to note that the combative song I quote above, "This Will Never End," opens with a call and response between the AGSFB's girliest "ah ah ah ah"s and the AGSFB's edgiest guitar riffs. The AGSFB doesn't take the fight out of the girl, nor the girl out of the fight.

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All this review of musical style and lyrical content might shock an unassuming fan of the AGSFB's earlier work, because on this album the band strays far and wide from their initial formula[tion]. But it's hardly a worry. I've never met a person who only likes the sub-sub-genre of music the AGSFB focused on in their earlier two albums: twee-surf-girl-pop-rock (or something like that). So I will note that this third album ranges much more widely, stylistically, without intending any warning to previous or would-be fans that they ought to steer clear of this mis-labeled music, which turns out to be less adolescent, less breezy, than what a person might (with reason) expect out of the All Girl Summer Fun Band.

This album is less breezy, but not in a bad way. For one thing, a few tracks, e.g. "Everything I Need," are breezy yet. More importantly though, the willful (willing) playfulness, the frankness, the reticence to indulge superfluous irony, and the earnest, tender, full-hearted feeling that I crave from the AGSFB are here in full force. You might say the band's attitude is childlike without being childish, but that's not quite right. It must take a lot of self-possession -- maturity -- for the ladies to feel and play so freely without descending into triviality. And without cloaking it all in fashionable irony, as armor against critical arrows of sophisticates (one professional review noted of the AGSFB that they were so open to attack they were "all chink"). And without distancing themselves from their work in caricatured personas. I am tempted to suspect the AGSFB did in fact depend on triviality and persona to safely make their music at first, and that with increasing artistry they needed the crutches no longer, but that's also not quite right. I think their interests led them, as a matter of tone, to adopt twee girlpop, and the genre conventions in turn shaped their initial output, but that there was never any distancing or hiding, only a narrower range of expression. So I reiterate: this album aims wider and hits more diverse marks than earlier albums, and brings into fuller bloom the lovely sensibility of the AGSFB. Wisdom, maturity, recognizes the plain truth that there's always more to learn, feel, and think. This openmindedness and independence is quintessentially many things, including youthful. There is a good reason this, rather not a debut album, is given such an incipiently probative title as 'Looking Into It.'

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* My verbal contrivance might seem to threaten credulity, but if you look into it you will find the wordplay justified.

** By the way, the AGSFB started out a quartet, but is now a trio, because one member left after having a child.

Use to be a 4some, but now a 3some, due to one of them taking care of the kid, still a winner, think Cub meets the Fastbacks, some bands I buy without hearing upon a new release, AFGSB fit the bill. Great band and probably their strongest set of songs yet, first few are gems and moves pretty briskly from there.

Great job, Gals! Rockin' - All 3 of their releases are essential listening.