Blogarhythms

While the existence of The Spice Girls mercifully killed the manufactured “girl group” in a mainstream media context until the introduction of those Pussycat Dolls, the more classic “girl group sound,” rooted in the sweet and soulful vocal harmonies and snappy musical accompaniment popularized by girl groups of the 1960’s has long remained a prominent entry in popular music’s stylistic lexicon. It’s sustained influence has been evident on a multitude of genres over the years, including New Wave, Post-Punk/Pop-Punk, Freestyle/Electro, Indie-Pop, R&B, and even Reggae. And as I’ve said before it’s even managed to make a return to the charts thanks to Amy Winehouse and her collaborators Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson. But it’s still in the popular music “underground” of Indie-Pop, where catchy melodies, pretty harmonies, clap-a-long rhythms, and retro kitsch are prized, that it’s almost always possible to find a cute girl or two putting a new spin on the old ways.

You may recall that I’ve mentioned Connecticut-based school teacher-turned-one-woman-band Sharon Hagopian, a.k.a. Cannonball Jane, in association with the Brill Building/Wall of Sound girl-group resurgence before. Her 2006 full-length debut Street Vernacular joined sugary, multi-tracked vocals and coyly girlish songwriting with block-rocking breaks, samples, toy keyboard melodies, drum machine beats, and shuffly Drum-n-Bass rhythms, and won her the support of such notables as Kathleen Hanna and The Beastie Boys‘ Ad-Rock. Some of the best tracks from that disc (”Slumber Party,” “Breaker Breaker”) make an encore appearance, alongside a handful of new selections and a couple of remixes, on her new Gaddycat Records EP Knees Up. Her homie Ad Rock even contributes one of the remixes, a bleepy take on new track “Take it to Fantastic.”

Listen to “Take it to Fantastic” (Smallstars Remix by Ad Rock)

Striking a similar balance between modern, sample-based production techniques and old-school multi-layered vocal harmonies, Lawrence, Kansas’ Adrianne Verhoeven, a.k.a. Dri, comes off something like Beck if he were a girl with a honey-toned voice and a jones for both the classic Pop of old and contemporary Hip-Hop and R&B, rather than the lanky “hipster doofus” he is. Though she made her mark as keyboardist for Alterna-Rock quintet The Anniversary (which boasted Blogarhythms featuree White Flight as a member too), the music on her solo debut Smoke Rings (out November 6th on Range Life Records), a blend of lush samples, moody loops, glitchy electronics, choppy beats, keyboards, and other live instruments, topped with lyrics largely concerned with love and romance, written in a voice that alternates between demure ’60s throwback and streetwise modernity, sung in candy-coated tones, couldn’t be more different from her former bands output. The drum-machine beats, Latin-Jazz guitar samples, and soulful chords compliment Dri’s romantic notions and “oooh-oooh” ad-libs particularly well on the dreamy “What’s Real.”

Listen to “What’s Real”

The only things missing from today’s girl-group repertoire are those choreographed dance routines and appearances on black-and-white television variety shows.

-El Keter