Girls at the Majestic Theatre
A packed Majestic Theatre crowd went batshit Friday night when Girls’ vocalist Christopher Owens emerged, looking rather whimsical with his shirt tucked into his hiked-up pantaloons. After taking the stage—which was ornately adorned with several floral arrangements—Girls kicked off with set-opener “Lust For Life.” (You know, that’s the song with the NSFW video where Hunx from Hunx And His Punx sings into some dude’s erect penis.) Owens’ bratty hiccups were quickly piled over by a friendly crowd sing-along, as bandmate Chet White’s basslines took a sugary stroll beneath the jangling chords of Owens’ Rickenbacker guitar.
San Fran’s most Google-proof pop-rock shape-shifters scaled a wide range of tunes from 2009’s Album (ranging from nasty shoegaze rocker “Morning Light” to the mellow shuffle of “Laura”), but the obvious focus was on the band’s latest effort, Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Since Owens and White are the only two actual members of Girls, they wisely enlisted members of openers Papa to back them up. That band’s palpable contributions helped fill in the album’s massive dynamic shifts, from the Black Sabbath-harkening fuzz-blaster “Die” to the organ-laden waltz of “Love Like A River,” which eerily sounds like a lost outtake from Plastic Ono Band.
For Girls’ surprisingly young fanbase, yelling random shit at Owens seemed to be a popular way to kill time between songs. The awkward frontman didn’t have much to say besides the obligatory “thanks” between songs, but that didn’t stop kids from yelling harmless declarations like “I love you Chris!” or creepily specific questions like, “Hey Chris! How was the sushi?” Upon hearing said question, Owens did look up from his guitar to shoot the crowd a look of complete and utter bewilderment.
Despite the band carrying only two actual members and sharing the stage with hired guns, at no point during the set did “bedroom-band” alarms start firing off. Owens’ vocals are sounding less bratty and more confident, and the new tunes tie together tightly and seamlessly. That being said, it’s probably time the publicists shut up about Owens’ time in the Children Of God cult. Save the shitty ethos marketing for Vanilla Ice, and let Father, Son, Holy Ghost and the band’s fashionably strange, confident performance speak for themselves.
