Broken Dreams Club
Album | Girls (2000s band)
For the indie record store owner in all of us.
Following the critical success of their 2009 debut Album, Broken Dreams Club finds the duo of Christopher Owens and Chet “JR” White refining their record-store rock, effortlessly combining Roy Orbison-inspired crooning with Smiths-style guitar jangle. Lead-off track “Oh So Protective One” finds the band taking baby steps away from the bedroom-caliber production of its past. Even for a group that's never been afraid to wear their record collections on their collective sleeve, the Elvis Costello-meets-Ben E. King number is an audacious move, as well as the EP's biggest success. Plenty of songwriters would sound whiny and puerile when moaning “I just wanna get high, but everyone keeps bringing me down,” as Owens does on the title track, but Girls have a way of communicating simple emotions without strapping them to melodrama. There's a lot to like in these half-dozen songs, though their brevity reminds the listener of how perfectly structured Girls' debut was: the EP's extended seven-minute freakout "Carolina" would sound even better if it had an LP's worth of songs draped around it, a la Album's centerpiece “Hellhole Ratrace.” Fortunately, Girls have given us no reason not to expect even better in the future.
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