Horsegirl
Phonetics On and On

Lou Reed once said that if you want to play in a rock 'n' roll band, knowing one chord is more than enough, but if you want to exaggerate with virtuosity, you need to know two; if you even know three, you're ready for the Dave Brubeck quartet.

Today, three girls from Chicago take Reed's maxim as gospel and give me an album that will probably be among my favorites of 2025 – maybe not THE favorite, but that's a detail that means nothing – and it will definitely be the most surprising.

I met Horsegirl about three years ago, when their debut album was praised as if it were the altar at the beginning of the Christmas mass: the radiant future of noise pop and shoegaze, the alternative and indie rock that are always present, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine.

I tried to jump on that crowded bandwagon and bought the album: a terrifying bore, at best three listens and then into the darkest recesses of my forgetfulness. From what little I remember – the big single "Anti Glory" and that's it – it's not a bad record, but the feelings of "constructed" and "fake" that I immediately assigned to it, those, I remember perfectly and it's even worse than simple ugliness.

In short, I took the ticket but didn't get on the bandwagon.

After three years, Nora, Penelope, and Gigi decided to get off that bandwagon, to try doing something that pleased them more than the record label and the producer, taking the risk of sounding "constructed" and "fake" today for the first-time praisers, as they appeared to me in 2022: for instance, in the bulletin board posted in my favorite record store, there's already a message from someone deeply disappointed with their indie-folk turn.

Having said that there's very little indie and alt – perhaps because I still don't understand the difference between playing indie, playing alt, and playing pure and simple rock 'n' roll – there's even less folk in this "Phonetics On And On."

Instead, there's an image that resurfaced as soon as I saw the video for "Switch Over," that of Slant 6 on the back cover of "Soda Pop Rip Off," even if they were so different from Horsegirl: but it was a nice feeling and a step forward compared to the debut.

And I come to how Horsegirl sounds today.

As I hear them, they sound a lot like the Feelies, those of "Time For A Witness" and that beautiful song "Waiting," with the extremely sparse attitude of the Beat Happening: the rhythms aren't as crazy, but Horsegirl's approach to traditional sound material reminds me of those experiences, and down goes another massive dose of good feelings. This is how the album opens with "Where'd You Go" – more Feelies-like than the Feelies – and "Rock City," and it continues like that until the end.

Then there's that persistent thing of "translating words into tones" as Nora sings in "Information Content," the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da and the fa-la-la-la-la-la-la and the woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-ooh that punctuate every song and for me, always and still a passionate air-guitar performer, are a marvel, especially in "2468" – a violin-adorned waltz to start, accelerated rock 'n' roll, and rusty ending – and in "Switch Over" where Lou Reed peeks out pleased from the cover of "Transformer"; also because if the Feelies are mentioned, then it's impossible to leave out Lou (and here even the Velvet of the third album).

Even though, for me, the best things come when Horsegirl takes their foot off the accelerator, here's "Julie" and "Frontrunner," just to remind me how little it takes to make a great song and, precisely because of this, why it's so difficult; and if "Frontrunner" makes me think of Green Day's "Good Riddance," maybe it will make someone turn up their nose and confirm their belief in the indie-folk turn of the girls, but I just hope they achieve success even if infinitesimal compared to those other three.

In conclusion, I sum up, and the total is that I find myself with a great record in my hands.

This time too, I bought the ticket and got on the bandwagon, waiting for an overflowing crowd.