I think some folks are, rightly, going to check out Birthday Girl because Mabel Canty's father is Brendan Canty (Rites of Spring, Fugazi, The Messthetics, etc.), or because Isabella MacKaye's dad is Alec MacKaye (The Faith, Ignition, The Warmers, Hammered Hulls, etc.). But people are going to stay with this band because the music those two make with drummer Tess Kontarinis is sharply realized and emotive. What's here on the band's self-titled debut isn't so much the sound of a new generation of harDCore, as it is that of the heyday of college rock. Less Beefeater and more Bettie Serveert is what I'm saying.
Opener "Run the Bath" revs up and cools down in a manner not entirely unlike certain Nirvana songs, or the fuzzy stuff from the early years of Pavement, while "House of Cards" and "Check Up" marry Mabel's warm vocals up with riffs that punch these melodies into their own unique space. There's hints here of pioneers like Juliana Hatfield and Veruca Salt, but Birthday Girl blend this stuff up so deftly that the faint hints of bands us old fogies still listen to most definitely do not make this a band with marked retro appeal. The shimmering "Stains" chimes and winds itself up, Mabel's voice carrying this one into the atmosphere. There's a tension here that the players harness, even as the vocals soothe. Closer "Ibuprofen", a real standout, recorded by Mary Timony (Autoclave, Helium, Hammered Hulls, Ex Hex, etc.), suggests another looser iteration of this band's sound, though the whole album retains a heft that's natural. Recorded and produced by Brendan Canty, the rest of the album reveals a neat marriage of beautiful vocal-lines and a punchy insistence that seems somehow a natural thing. This is remarkably assured, and familiar in crucial ways too, but sometimes it takes a new batch of musicians to find the freshness in the forms we've loved for so long.
Birthday Girl by Birthday Girl is out now.
Birthday Girl are playing the Black Cat 30th Anniversary Show, night 1, in September.
[Photo: Brendan Canty]