SadGirl – Water
Suicide Squeeze – 14 June 2019
SadGirl are an anomaly, a current-era rock and roll band indebted to 1950s music that incorporates everything since then. On Water, their first album after five years of EPs and singles, they throw all their influences into a pot and come up with a cross-cultural blending that sounds unlike anyone else.
Having grown up on both sides of the Atlantic, guitarist and frontman Misha Lindes certainly understands the music business. His father, Hal played for Dire Straits before becoming a session guitarist and arranger of film music. That’s Hal’s Strat on Tina Turner’s Private Dancer. Along with bass player Dakota Peterson and drummer David Ruiz, they have created a sound that pays tribute to virtually every generation of rock.
There’s more than a little bit of Les Paul on the opening of The Ocean. Yet when Misha’s vocals come in things take a bit of a turn as he sings, “I require devotion that I cannot provide, I can’t live with myself, I don’t want anyone else.” It’s an interesting trick being able to feel simultaneously alone and comfortable with being alone.
The bedevilling Chlorine is a beehived beauty straight out of the trailer park. Over a bed of acoustic piano, the verse lays out her loveliness before a swelling sax fills in the details of how she ensnares men as she heads out to a future on the road to who knows where.
Wearing his influences on his sleeve Hazelnut Coffee is a song built for cruising as Lindes describes, “… it sits between Smokey Robinson and Tom Tom Club.” An instrumental, “… but the guitar tells a story – there’s definitely a love story in this track.” Listening in you can almost hear Smokey’s voice filling the frame.
Miss Me comes to life with a fuzz guitar solo, but the lyrics make it clear some romances are simply never meant to be. “Miss me with that bullshit you can never explain.” What more do you need to say? Sometimes the reward simply isn’t worth the pain.
The 50s to the 70s come together in Breakfast for 2, a saga that realizes sometimes we make mistakes in the person we decide to be with. The vocals have a doo-wop feel with organ and synths moving the track forward in time. Visiting a previously recorded tune, Little Queenie, strings and organ take it into a new space.
Paying homage to guitarist Link Wray, the instrumental Mullholland cleanses the palette for the final act. Strange Love teaches the narrator how to love again, although there’s a cost, “It’s a good feeling to live in regret, She don’t even know your name.”
Finally, there’s Water, building from guitar and vocal it underscores how life changes and how we deal with it. “The man I see is not the man I’m used to, must be something wrong with the glass. Feels like I’m peering through a window searching for someone from the past.” Self-reflection that makes you look at what you’ve done and determine if that’s still what you want to do.
Water is the elixir of life, yet in the hands of SadGirl it is a fresh draught combining the past with the present. Sometimes the only way to move forward is by looking back, and Lindes and company do it with a remarkably fresh approach.
Photo Credit: James Michael Juarez