But really, Girls were were the boys courting the crowd. They took the stage with a giant bouquet of dead sunflowers behind them--a fitting prop since so many of their songs are dramatic variations on the theme of romance being dead (or, alternately, dying for a little romance).
Between songs, Girls projected a very loose attitude, singer Christopher Owens thanking the crowd in various funny voices, or sounding out what should be played next with bassist J.R. White, or taking a while to re-tune his guitar. But once it was showtime, the band was instantly tight, nailing a blissful array of Beach Boys pop, My Bloody Valentine noise, and Elvis Costello balladry, with hints of psych, shoegaze, and surf pop threaded through the songs. As a frontman, Owens is both over the top and unpretentious, fiddling with his long, tangled hair and giving goofy grins to the crowd on one hand, and on the other, delivering controlled wails about the romantic messes he'd find himself in (sample lyric: "If I had love I'd throw it all away.").
The band's best songs--"Lust For Life," which Owens dedicated last night to John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees, and "Hellhole Ratrace,"--seemed to especially excite the crowd. For those insanely catchy ditties, the iPhones and cameras raised up above the sea of heads like the tops of submarines, fans capturing the group as the Girls captured them in return. The one cover the group performed--Cass McCombs's "Dreams-Come-True-Girl"--slid nicely into the Girls' repertoire of musical mash notes that never got too mushy.
The group was a tough act to follow, and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart brought a lot of volume, if nothing else. Their setlist was a barrage of piercing shoegazer rock--played much more passionately than you'd expect from their more demure recordings. (They got the passion right back from the fans, one of whom yelled "We love you" only two songs into the set, while Owens from Girls jumped on stage to play tambourine with the Pains by the end of the show).
But listening to them live, it was hard to hear the Pains as being much more than a B-side to the '90s shoegazer scene. They sounded like those bands you'd hear at Popscene back in the day--the ones that weren't quite Jesus and Mary Chain, weren't quite My Bloody Valentine, but were fine to tide over the revelers until the DJ pulled a more distinct act out from the pile. It didn't take long for the group's songs to blur into one another, and soon after, blur into a whole generation of artists who bruised up 120 Minutes back when all those romantic feedback and delay squalls were first really exciting.
For now, the Pains seem to have grabbed the attention of both older 'gazer fans wanting another hit of the old JAMC sound and kids too young to have really witnessed it live the first time. In contrast, Girls wore their influences more subtly, and more dynamically, swerving along a more varied path of pop history--so while their subject matter (girls) was one of the oldest in the book, their sound was full of new excitement, for the band and its fans alike.
