Girlpool
Before The World Was Big
Wichita Recordings
When you’re a kid, your world is pretty much as far as you’re allowed to ride your bike. It’s the street you live on, the woods you shortcut through to get to your best friend’s house, and that gas station on the corner where you buy candy and soda. When you get a little older, and you have to take a bus to get to middle school, that world grows a little bigger and problems get a little more complicated. By the teen years the small world that felt so comfortable for so long suddenly stifles and you can’t wait to get out. To get away. The world is big and you can’t wait to rule it… until you get out there and realize it’s not just big, it’s enormous. Now that small world you left feels kinda cozy, kinda sweet. Maybe you rushed through it and didn’t appreciate it like you should’ve. Now the memory of standing next to your best friend “wearing matching dresses before the world was big” is a pang in your heart.
That’s growing up, and that is Girlpool’s debut album, Before The World Was Big. A couple of teenage girls (Cleo Tucker – guitar, and Harmony Tividad – bass) figuring out who they are and what they want in life, while writing it all down and setting it to music. The sound is spare (no drums) and intimate like a sleepover that led to a jam session. Their harmonies are sometimes childlike and excited (“Before the World Was Big,”“Crowded Stranger” ) and sometimes as angelic as First Aid Kit (“Chinatown,” “Dear Nora,” “Cherry Picking”). Their lyrics are honest and deceptively simple with the unselfconcsiousness of youth and the resulting songs are wonderfully pure.
