Girls in Hawaii
From Here To There

THE REVIEW

As usual, I can't resist, I get off my bike and enjoy the window of my trusted little record shop (goodbye Mega Store). It’s Friday, release day. A quick glance at the four rows of displayed CDs and a vivid green spot hits me right in the face, the cover of a newly displayed record. A beam of light like a teleportation cylinder connects the spring landscape on the cover and my dazzled eyes. All around, nothing—a sea of other records but gray, truly in black and white now. Maybe it's because they say green will be this summer's color, maybe it's because blooming meadows are what we all want to see after these rains, or perhaps more likely because of the label "Recommended by Mucchio," but I want to hear it. A few intoxicating listens and it's mine.

Girls In Hawaii, six twenty-somethings from Belgium (Guys! Get the images of girls in bikinis on Hawaiian beaches out of your heads) for one of the most explosive debuts of 2004: "From Here To There."

The band plays loud and clear; it's an album of contagious enthusiasm. I wouldn't say it if I weren't firmly convinced; I've long been vaccinated and desensitized to the "Next Big Thing" that the specialized press is so fond of! In twelve tracks plus a Ghost Track, the band showcases various genres, where originality is just slightly hindered by a grand technical baggage that's a bit manneristic. In short, they play things maybe already heard, but in their own way, with truly important technical means and freshness. Their muses (and what muses!), echoed in every track, watch them with proud pride.

It's impossible not to notice the similarities with the electro-psychedelia and the rarefied voice of Grandaddy in "Organeum," and I’m already humbled. But it doesn't stop there; equally evident are the similarities with Belle & Sebastian in "Short Song For a Short Mind," and with Pavement in the obliqueness of "Time To Forgive the Winter." If the initial "9.00 am" even recalls the Eels, I can't exclude, in the tribute game, even the more inspired Travis and their compatriots dEUS. A truly great promise these Girls In Hawaii, they would deserve a four, to tell the truth, because the maximum is given to an album that remains and marks history. But I still prefer to give them that 5 that young people who have the courage to make such important promises at their debut demand!