CD - Girl And Girl - Call A Doctor

1 CD 

In one sense, it's easy for artists - songwriters, specifically - to express their feelings in their work. After all, that's what the lyrics are for! But it's much harder to convey emotional energy in how you play, slash at the guitar, and the structure of the music itself.

That's precisely why Girl And Girl's Sub Pop debut, "Call A Doctor", feels like such a vital, electrifying shock to the senses. Not since the early work of Car Seat Headrest or Conor Oberst's widescreen emotional brutality as Bright Eyes has indie rock managed to come across as this intimate and grandiose, as the Australian quartet led by Kai James lay a lifetime's worth of woes - mental health, the human race's planned obsolescence - across a canvas of indie rock that feels both timeless and in-the-moment.

The album's eleven songs - spanning sweeping guitar epics and wry acoustic shuffles to spiky punk maneuvers and the type of raw, adoringly unvarnished indie-pop associated with legendary PacNW label K Records - are literally plucked from James' personal history, as he reworked older recordings with newer lyrics reflecting his past struggles as well as new anxieties that emerged prior to the album's recording.