Artist of the Day: Girls

On the day before the Fourth of July (aka July 3rd) music blogs were buzzing with the news that Christopher Owens had decided to quit Girls.  Reactions varied from "Wow, what kind of guys does he like?" to "LOL what bitch screwed him over?" But lost in the clustermess of these "is he gay?" jokes was the fact that our generation was losing one of its few musical five star recruits.  Girls was a band that was just oozing with potential but quit to early to realize it, they were almost the Barry Sanders of our musical generation.

Their first album Album proved that the band could make 60s' rock possible and their second album Father, Son, Holy Ghost proved that the band could make just about any type of music possible.  FSHG featured Beach Boys sounding 60s' beach rock, 1980s' heavy metal sounding songs, mid 1990s' grunge, songs that sound like a combination of all the modern indie classics, a nine minute song that combines all of his influences, and even some songs that incorporate gospel influences.  FSHG is almost like one of those informercials for "THE ULTIMATE SONGS OF (INSERT DECADE)" that distract you at 3 a.m. while you are looking up some really depressing porn, they combine sounds from every genre possible, but they do it from every decade and they create an album that actually flows together.  Every song on FSHG sounds totally different, but the album still flows together better than 95% of the critically acclaimed albums out there.

So when you consider that Girls had not even come close to reaching their potential and combine that with the fact that FSHG haphazardly reinvents the musical wheel, Owens quitting Girls is much more than a punchline.  It is a musical tragedy.

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