Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Rock ‘n’ roll can
save your life. It’s an escape—a way to break free from
constraints, whether in your background, your upbringing, or whatever
circumstances you might be stuck in. That sentiment has been expressed
to the point of cliché, but in the case of Christopher Owens,
the cliché is absolutely true.
Owens was raised in the Children of God, an insular Christian
religious cult that came out of the free-love era of the 1960s. The
cult has received criticism for all kinds of nefarious practices,
including the brainwashing of its members, the alleged sexual abuse of
children within the group, and “flirty fishing,” wherein female members
of the cult would prostitute themselves in order to convert their
customers after having paid for sex. Owens’ unconventional upbringing
had him moving around a lot, but didn’t leave much room for learning
about music.
“I was probably about 13 when I finally moved into a house where
there were other kids who were smart enough to record songs off the
radio,” says Owens. “We’d hide those tapes and pass them around and
make copies of them—it was a very secretive kind of thing. It was
really exciting to do that. We would actually sit around and learn how
to play them, too, but it was all done behind the adults’ backs.
“I spent from the time I was 13 to the time I was 16 basically in
trouble,” he continues. “There was all this focus put on making me not
want to leave. I was already performing in public to raise money for
the house—I would perform in public all the time and I was really
good at it. But by the time I was 15, I just said, ‘I’m leaving and
there’s nothing you can do about it.’ They let me go out and play music
to make some money I needed for the ticket. It took a long time, like,
half a year or something. But during that time I would play all those
songs that I learned. I went from playing religious music with the
other kids to raise money for the house. And then finally, when I
didn’t have anything else to hide, I was playing secular music, of the
little that I knew—I only knew probably 10 songs. But I would
play those songs and that was pretty much when I started playing
music.”
Thanks to the money he raised by playing songs he’d secretly learned
off the radio, Owens was able to escape the Children of God. He moved
around the US—living in a punk house in Texas, trying to make it
as a painter in New York—before settling in San Francisco. After
a stint in the band Holy Shit alongside Ariel Pink and Matt Fishbeck,
Owens found himself writing his own songs, and soon formed Girls with
friend/bassist/producer Chet “J.R.” White. While Owens and White remain
the core duo, Girls’ lineup has swelled from two to at times as many as
eight, but Girls is currently touring as a four-piece, with new
guitarist Ryan Lynch replacing John Anderson, who quit a few weeks
ago.
Girls’ debut, Album, is already one of the most talked-about
records of the year, in no small part due to its twin highlights:
opener “Lust for Life,” a breathless, hazy pop nugget with a chiming
guitar and an indelible melody; and the Roy Orbison-esque “Hellhole
Ratrace,” a languid, slowly crescendo-ing lament whose climax lives
somewhere between the post-rock stratosphere and a lighter-in-the-air
power ballad. Album is a remarkably unaffected pop record, full
of sorrow and redemption and—when the situation calls for
it—Spector-esque walls of sound. It sits squarely outside the
current trend of detachment, unabashedly embracing moroseness, joy, and
all the sentiments in between.
“My musical background is pretty basic,” says Owens. “It’s like love
songs from movies, or religious music, which is just
verse-chorus-verse-chorus. So when a song comes out of me, it’s in that
very basic structure. I don’t mind it. I’ve always been a fan of
country music and the oldies. I like simple songs that you can remember
and find yourself singing later, as opposed to crazier stuff.
“I still have never listened to Sonic Youth. I still don’t have any
Beatles albums,” he adds. “When you start listening to music at 16
years old, you’re behind everybody. I’m still behind.”