Little Girls getting bigger

A side project no more, Toronto’s Little Girls have grown substantially with their latest album Concepts

Post-punk shoe gazer: A member of Little Girls. Brittany Shepherd

Toronto’s Little Girls may have started as a side project, but with the release of their new album Concepts, the band has taken centre stage.

“We’re still good friends, we just won’t be playing shows together for a while,” Josh McIntyre, Little Girls frontman, said of Pirate/Rock, the band from which they spawned.

There are no hard feelings towards Little Girls’ newfound success, as McIntyre found his minor role in the previous project unsatisfying.

With Little Girls, McIntyre has complete control over the direction of the band, even down to recording in a makeshift home studio for his preferred sound.

Their minimalist post-punk style is the kind of music that can be dissected with careful listening or simply set as comforting background noise. This effect comes from Little Girls’ repetitive fuzzy guitars and muddled lyrics.

“[I] didn’t want the vocals to be on top of the music,” McIntyre said. He opted instead for a more ambient sound where the vocals are featured as another instrument in the mix.

Hating the forced cleanliness of modern music, McIntyre favored recording Concepts in his bedroom, using only his own equipment. He even recorded the lyrics and most of the drums through the mic on his MacBook, adding a characteristic that is difficult to replicate in live shows.

The album is a timeline of the band’s work so far, progressing from Little Girl’s earliest songs to their most recent.

The idea behind Concepts, McIntyre said, was to “take a stab at the waves of people who put more effort into the concept of art than the actual project.”

Released in October, the band is quite satisfied with how the album is being received.

“[The success] was overwhelming at first; once it did happen it was an overload of nonsense. Websites I loved were writing about me and magazines I had been reading for years were featuring us. It was a weird transition.”

Being mentioned in several popular music blogs helped publicize the band in the early part of the year, surprisingly resulting in a slew of media attention and tour offers.

“The Internet is great. There’s no point in limiting yourself when you have access to free media.”

McIntyre plans on finishing a new Little Girls record soon, most of which he has already crafted himself.

“The new album will feature more recording as a band, not just by me,” McIntyre said.

Editor’s note: The photograph that appears with this article was incorrectly identified as being of Brittany Shepherd, who is the photographer. The correct information appears above.

Published in Volume 64, Number 12 of The Uniter (November 19, 2009)

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