This band is an interesting case. The Chicago trio released their well-received debut album in 2022 while still in or just out of high school, depending on the band member. This very site, while giving that album a lukewarm review, allowed that this was a band to keep an eye on. I liked the debut better than the review’s author, but understood the criticism that the songs did not rise above being a pastiche, a teenage riot of familiar sounds. I saw the band live on their inaugural tour and came away very impressed. They had that spark that made me think I would one day be saying, I remember when I saw Horsegirl at the Rickshaw Stop, to expressions of jealous disbelief. (This is an example of my fantasy life; most people have no idea what I’m talking about when I talk about music.)
This second album is a left turn. Maybe a U-turn. Eschewing the debut’s Sonic Youth production for that of the Welsh chanteuse, Cate LeBon, Horsegirl have delivered an album that feels plucked out of the used vinyl bins at Rough Trade. This is the album Laurie Partridge might have recorded had she run away from the Top-40 dreams of her overbearing brother and taken up with Jonathan Richman. That is to say I like it quite a bit and you may very well not, or at least be resistant to it. I can’t recall anything quite like it recently. While women have come to power in the pop and punk genres, there seems to be room at the top for the sort of indie rock of Horsegirl’s first album, a space ceded by Sleater-Kinney, not that I’m throwing dirt on them yet, to which Horsegirl responds, Not so fast.
You suspect something is afoot with the brief opener ‘Where’d You Go?’ its call and response vocals asking and answering that question over strumming guitar and thumping toms, ending with a time traveling psych guitar solo. The answer to the question is ‘far, far away’ and I resist the urge to read too much into that. It might just be about moving to New York. The band, however, commits to a vintage groove and stays there for the album’s 37 minutes.
I thought I would try to not mention THAT certain band in this review, but it is too much of a coincidence that two of the three members go to college now in Greenwich Village, NYC and brought the third along for company. Your response to this album might be a litmus test of whether you think The Velvet Underground’s persistent influence over 50 years later is welcome and should be celebrated. I do. The damaged DNA of that band is in here, not the least in drummer Gigi Reese’s minimal use of cymbals, which Moe Parker famously rejected. However, these three young women seem fairly stable just from what I’ve read and having clocked them performing live. And they don’t write songs about waiting for a heroin dealer. (I was concerned for a bit. I mean HORSEgirl).
Lyrically and musically the album is spare. The songs are filled with “la la las” “whooo ooos” “do do dos” and “da, da, das”. These remain the finest lyrics in rock; The Police famously declared that that was all they wanted to say to you. The lyrics are often delivered as deadpan conversation between Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein. Simple strummed guitar is decorated with bright filigrees chirping aside the chugging rhythm, like in ‘Rock City’ or the lovely ‘Julie.’ Tambourine, shakers, sleigh bells often stand in for noticeable hi-hat. The songs are all of a piece, the album best experienced from beginning to end and turned up loud. Jack these songs up in volume and they are not as subdued as they first seem. This is not an album to dip your toe into. Get your hair wet. If I have a criticism, it is that I wish that the band would occasionally let it rip and freak out for like three or four minutes. There are flirtations at the close of ‘Where Are You?’ and ‘Rock City’ but they end abruptly. I would listen to an eight minute version of ‘2468’ that never deviates from its relentless repetition.
When I talk about not being sure there is anything like this at the moment, I will have a Powerpoint slide on the song ‘Information Content’ which reminds me of some old Modest Mouse songs like ‘Broke,’ or ‘Baby Blue Sedan,’ songs more emotionally affecting musically than they really have any right to be. The term “dated” when pejoratively applied to music, a use I object to, and where that crosses into the presumably favorable territory of “timeless” is perhaps the subject of a longer essay. But, this album sketches the outlines of a bridge spanning decades, with noticeable abutments, that ends, for now, at a 2025 band called Horsegirl. This band is good. Better, it is intriguing.
Words by Rick Larson
Picky Bastards 
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