Stephen Mejias Blog

Little Girls and Lo-Fi Posted Tue Oct 13, 2009, 1:25 PM ET

My problem is intensified a million times over by the fact that many of these releases are severely limited. I’m talking as few as 300 (or even just 250!) copies of a certain album are pressed on delicious vinyl, and that’s it. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Thank the holy lord up above that I live in the New York City area and I can get my hands on just about anything I want. A trip to Other Music or Hospital Productions takes just a few minutes. Of course, I could always purchase these titles online, but where’s the fun in that? Actually going to the record shop and finding a copy of the album is so much more special. It feels deserved, it feels won.

And, really, it is a competition. I have a couple of LP-loving friends (their names might be Michael Lavorgna and John DeVore) who may not be fully aware of this, but here it is: I live each day of my life in a race against them to find the coolest new titles. Sometimes I don’t even tell them about a record until I’m ready to post something about it here on the blog. And then it’s like: Blam, kapow, booyah!

In
your
face.

A nuclear missile attack of fresh sounds. Take that, ML. Who’s your daddy now, Monkey Man? Woof!

Yeah, what was I saying? Oh, the problem. The problem is that many of the bands I’ve been listening to lately are on very small labels, releasing extremely limited runs of vinyl. While this is sort of cool—it makes the vinyl even more special—it also means that I have to fend off, like, 17 million other people who might be interested in buying one of the three copies of Little Girls’ debut, Concepts, set to show up in stores, oh, any day now. Not to mention all the other internet freaks who live somewhere in the Midwest and don’t play by my silly rules and who have already pre-ordered the vinyl directly from Paper Bag.

Bastards.

(I hate pre-ordering stuff. All too often, the goods never arrive. In the record shop, I can at least see and feel what I’m buying.)

Anyway, I know that Little Girls sound like so many other things you’ve already heard. The title track sounds way too much like Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” for instance, and I’m sure the band is aware of it, too, but I can’t resist the jangly, fuzzed out guitar riff which opens “Salt Swimmers,” the way (I’m guessing) it unwittingly references Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and, at the very same time, shouts out to Blank Dogs and Gary War. I love this shit, and I could listen to it all damn day long. In fact, I have.

This week only, you can stream all of Little Girls’ Concepts right here. The band has also released material on Mexican Summer and Captured Tracks, two other labels that have been driving me crazy. (I like just about everything they put out.)

Oh!

Another thing: A lot of these bands I’ve been mentioning lately—Zola Jesus, Blank Dogs, Silk Flowers, Times New Viking, Gary War, and now Little Girls—have an obviously lo-fi quality to their sound. What’s funny about it is that, despite their apparent low fidelity, these albums sound terrific on the hi-fi. I mean, these are not audiophile recordings, but they do present layers and layers of fascinating sounds in believable spaces, with good senses of momentum and impact, and you can turn them up as loud as you want without feeling as if you’ve taken a knife to your ears. It boggles the mind. One assumes that because the artists are free from the pressure of major labels to produce loud-ass hit songs for radio stations, television shows, or commercials, they are able to create work with real dynamic range. There is much in this music that would be lost if listened to through a pair of plastic computer speakers or as wimpy MP3s. A good hi-fi, however, will reveal the intricate details of all this good lo-fi.

How long will this wave last, I wonder. For a very long time, I hope.

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