I’d almost like to say that Baltimore-based Girlpool has experienced a second birth of sorts. It’s not evolution, because we’re not talking about a natural and logical progression from one state to another. If the three records that precede What Chaos is Imaginary constitute something of a straight path along which the band’s aesthetic progression can be tracked in a specific direction, each record further refining and exploring expression within an often bittersweet, bedroom-pop niche, the material on this latest record doesn’t strike us radically as something other than another step towards that initial direction.
Saying that Girlpool has been reborn is both kitschy in the sense that it metonymically sneaks religious iconography into our headspace when discussing the band, and inaccurate in the sense that the band never suffered an artistic death from which to be plucked by rebirth. The change between Powerplant’s shoegaze anthem “123” and Chaos’ rock crowd pleaser “Hire” isn’t reactionary; the band doesn’t seem to have embraced faster tempos and more obviously electric instrumentation in a bid to get away from what they once were. The change comes nonchalantly. Cleo Tucker’s more energetic, confrontational vocals are just sort of there and man, do they work.
Girlpool’s first three records evolve; the fourth simply appears, fully-formed, and rad as hell.
Mind you, the Chaos still betrays the nostalgic emotionality of its predecessors. On “Josephs Dad,” for example, Harmony Tividad’s vocals are timorous once again, but she wields her indecision with a tenacity that paints its appearance on this record in an entirely different light. Album closer “Roses” is equally akin to the band’s earlier work in that it wears its patient, shoegaze drone on its sleeve. All this to say that the band hasn’t changed so much as to become unrecognizable, just enough to turn heads.
Acoustic tracks like “Hoax and the Shrine” also balance the record out in a manner that seems counterintuitive at first, since the tracks foil more straightforward rock pieces like “Swamp and Bay,” which itself manages to retain the distinction of being as suitable to a John Hughes soundtrack as they are unique to the moment in which they appear on the record.
Equally impressive is the record’s eponymous track, which builds itself around a metallic synth and kick that might risk being too 1980s if it weren’t for Tividad’s silky, honest vocals. The marriage of both these elements, almost more than anything else on the record, drives home the point that the duo have grown in spades up until this point. There’s next to no room left to dismiss the more earnest tracks on the record as melodramatic, particularly since they’re flanked by more energetic companions which themselves can’t be dismissed as escapist, since they’re still each clearly two sides of the same coin, lyrically and emotionally tied together at the core.
I know we’re hardly into February, but I’m willing to bet that if you check in with me at the end of the year, I’ll still be enthusiastically telling friends (and you, reader) to give What Chaos is Imaginary a spin.
