Parenthetical Girls
Safe As Houses

The violated innocence of a girl too young and still immersed in her dreams of carefreeness and happiness. An unwanted maternity, the consequence of a wrong love, whose fruit will be a daughter never loved. The short life of this little creature, denied familial affection, soon cut short by a tragic accident, almost reiterating the unforgiving nature of fate. A younger brother, surviving his sister and equally rejected, upon whom the mother's guilt will be projected.

In a few cold words, here is the story narrated between the notes of this album; and if there are records where the emotional sphere is indissolubly linked to the musical one, to the point of prevailing, then "Safe as Houses" is certainly one of them.

The Parenthetical Girls, debuting here with a full-length album after the 2004 EP "(((GRRRLS)))", tell without sweeteners the dramas that are born and die within the seemingly reassuring space of domestic walls. You can feel the disturbing and morbid atmosphere of certain Ian McEwan novels among the tracks of this album. If these tracks were images, they would perhaps be slow-motion frames from "American Beauty".

In the background, one recognizes some of the poetic ideals held dear by James Stewart, leader of Xiu Xiu and true mentor of this band, for which he curated the production of the debut album. But if Xiu Xiu’s main musical pursuit revolves around experimentation, PG's goal is rather to compose a framework of contemporary sounds that represent an ideal soundtrack for the daily tragedies narrated by their music. A canvas dominated by strong colors.

PGs package ballads (which actually resemble short suites more) in which electronics and acoustics intertwine perfectly, where synthesizers and gentle electric guitars find their perfect complement in the acoustic sounds of xylophones (omnipresent and, not surprisingly, often found in Xiu Xiu’s latest works), strings, and a variety of other instruments.

Zac Pennington’s acerbic singing, the true soul of this group, which almost identifies itself in him like a one-man band, narrates these stories, perfectly in tune with the overall mood. A voice at times incredibly similar to Brian Molko's; and it's hard not to think that PGs might be what Placebo could have been had they not chosen the conventional path of pop-rock better suited for radio airplay.

"Safe as Houses" is a sharp album that, from the opening, puts the listener ill at ease. "There's Blood Between My Legs, And In The Grass Outside Your House I Came" begins Pennington in "Love Connection Pt. II", a piece ideally linking this album to the previous one, which ended with "Love Connection". The pathos reaches its peak in "I Was the Dancer", where the mother's dreadful words to her young daughter resonate ("It took you nine months to destroy my body") for a maternity that destroyed carefree days and illusions.

There are glimpses of apparent sweetness like "Oh Daughter/Disaster", "Keyholes And Curtains", or "Forward To Forget", in which acoustic sounds temporarily shed the electronic fabric and clearly reveal the influences of a rather unknown but extraordinarily talented songwriter like Ben Christopher, to whom PGs are surely indebted.

"Stolen Children" closes the curtain, dissolving the dramatic and musical tension into a kind of fatalistic resignation.

Thus, the PGs present us with an album that confirms the promise of their early recordings. A sophisticated pop tinged with lyricism, which reinterprets lessons from the masters (Talk Talk first and foremost) in an extremely contemporary key, without succumbing to the excessive compositional fragmentation that sometimes characterizes the experimental scene. Another pleasant surprise in a year that, allow me to say, after all, has not proven to be so meager.