Girl Friday are the sort of band who engender themselves to lazy comparison. The list is long and broad, encompassing both the gentility of acts like Cocteau Twins and the raggedness and lackadaisical vocal delivery of PJ Harvey. I can imagine Girl Friday’s Androgynous Mary described as derivative or unadventurous. These descriptors serve little purpose after over a century of recorded music; there is nothing new under the sun. Originality is how we Frankenstein our forebears’ disparate limbs together. Our expressions and individual voice live in the needlework—not in how well we disguise our musical literacy.
If anything, Girl Friday face the opposite problem here. Androgynous Mary bursts with loopiness and leftfield decisions. But these only become evident after casual listeners will have been turned off by some rote and insecure production. Girl Friday live far less in the shadow of dead and decrepit artists than they think. It feels invasive to suggest a band rejig their entire sound—but from a production standpoint, Androgynous Mary feels like an album which honours its influencers more than its own personnel.
Its sound does, conversely, grant Androgynous Mary a kind of unassuming anonymity, which it uses for ambushes. Listeners may pin ‘Eaten Alive’ down as pure post-punk pastiche, but it serpentines off-road for a Black Sabbath style sludge-fest outro. The clue is right there in the name of the LP’s first track; ‘This Is Not the Indie Rock I Signed Up For’. This technique lends destabilising vigour to Androgynous Mary—but it’s repeated so often throughout the album its coating rubs off a bit by the end.
Lyrics—much like the band’s name—are stark and matter-of-fact, compactly political and quietly humorous. Their precision and clear-headedness reflects Girl Friday’s very controlled approach. Androgynous Mary is both a restrained and unpredictable album. It portions out the metronomic plod of its post-punk ancestors with a side of wild and exciting freedom. It’s a very promising debut—and bodes well for a future in which an emboldened band can unleash their idiosyncrasy on the world.
Androgynous Mary is available for purchase and streaming here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe