The Jealous Girlfriends, The Jealous Girlfriends

Yeah, I’ve been wrestling with this one for a while. It’s surprisingly hard to peg down a band when they remind you of a period in music rather than of any specific band or bands, and that’s the case for me with The Jealous Girlfriends on their self-titled full-length. The easy thing would be to tag ’em as a nugaze band and move on, sure, but while the Girlfriends start off with a heady dose of vintage dreampop, all swirly/shimmery guitars, half-asleep vocals, and electronicized beats, that’s really only a part of the story.

Take opener “Secret Identity,” for one, with its infectiously simple vocal line, sung drowsily by vocalist/guitarist Holly Miranda, who sounds nearly like Johnette Napolitano at points (and I mean that as a big compliment). The track rides a nice MBV-ish undercurrent of noise-melody, but at the same time it sounds stark and “big sky”-esque, like dreampop reimagined by some West Texas roots-rock band. Miranda’s vocals shine throughout the album, veering from Cat Power-y gruff mumble to streetwise, blues-belter wail in a handful of steps. I’ll admit that I kind of figured I’d get sucked in by her voice, considering that she blew me away live not long ago, but Miranda’s matched nicely on about half the tracks by fellow guitarist Josh Abbott, whose voice I found myself liking a lot more than I’d guessed I would.

Abbott’s tracks tend to lean more towards glam-tinged pop-rock (“I Quit”; love the male/female vocals, there, especially the “woo-oo”s near the end), often heavily accented with electronics. His vocals are almost New Romantics-style, British and moody and generally bitter as hell, and they work wonderfully as a counterpoint to Miranda’s smoky bluesiness. He evokes Say Hi, if the Northwestern electro-popster were more angry and less sleepy, hopped up on caffeine or sheer self-righteous fury. That fury’s especially evident on “How Now,” a sharp-edged, surly roarer of a track that brings to mind late-period Superchunk with its driving, unrelenting forward motion.

You wouldn’t think the Jets To Brazil-ish rock of “I Quit” would segue neatly into sultry, soulful “Organs On The Kitchen Floor,” but fuck, it works. Speaking of the latter track, by the way, the band throws in some of the badass-est, thickest horns and keys, slathering it all with a desperately sordid, pleading vibe that makes the weirdness of the subject matter and title totally not matter. Miranda’s voice could thaw whole city blocks in winter, y’all. The Girlfriends take another hard right into “Something In The Water,” with huge-ass guitars, ferocious rhythms, and a Poster Children-ish feel, and continues on through “Gift Horse,” a stomping warning that’s got something to do with beachheads and biting horses in the mouth.

Of course, the band can’t totally escape their roots, so they dive into the shoegaze bag now and again, like on sweet, pastoral “The Pink Wig To My Salieri” or the murky, hazy “Hieroglyphics,” which comes off like a sunnier Jesus and Mary Chain and practically crushes the landscape with the sheer weight of those clouds of gorgeous guitar noise. “Roboxulla” steps down a bit, into Belle and Sebastian territory, all green grass and sunlight, while “Machines” is noisier and messier, a crashing dirge of noise and buried melody that builds and builds ’til it dissolves into “Carry Me,” delicate and beach-sounding with soft washes of sound and plinking keys.

Taken as a whole, then, maybe trying to categorize The Jealous Girlfriends into a neat little box is a stupid, pointless idea. They’re their own thing, their own amalgam of all these dreampop, ’90s indie-rock, blues, whatever styles into something new and ridiculously addictive. Forget putting ’em in a box; they’ll just cut their way out through the bottom.