Broken Dreams Club – Girls Broken Dreams Club – Girls (Free Download / Buy)

Perhaps it’s the lifelong hardships that Christopher Owens has had to suffer through. Perhaps it’s the simplistic bliss that accompanies their sound. Perhaps, it’s a combination of the two, or even some completely different reason. No matter what you attribute it to, it is undeniable that Girls has a knack for producing some of the  best indie rock in the modern day.

Their debut LP, Album, was an unheralded success as their completely unknown sound burst on to the scene, drawing comparisons to the drugged out revolutionaries of the 90s such as Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers. With a more scaled back approach, the suffering of a Kurt Cobain-esque lead singer was evident from the powerful lyrics Owens delivered. They were done with such a perfect compliment to the melodies, that they could only come from years of personal conviction.  Now, though, Girls is a band that has grown to into a rich group of musicians. They’ve spent time getting to know how their fellow bandmates play through a year littered with shows.

On Broken Dreams Club, the band’s latest EP, there is a great sense of maturity from the neophyte-type pitfalls that Album occasionally fell victim to. While it was still an amazingly strong album, given the catchiness and shock factor it had associated with it, it lacked any kind of tangible “album-for-the-ages” status. This 6-track series of songs, however, is naturally beautiful,  and the production value alone must have been astronomically high to get such a flawless sound recorded. This EP displays music that is among the strongest and richest that we’ve seen developed in 2010. It is reminiscent of Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest, in the sense that it sounds like music created in unadulterated freedom, which is obvious even with even the most cursory listen.

A track like “Heartbreaker” sounds more like Album with the catchy choruses but  somewhat juvenile conceptual approach to love and breakups. You can see the real development of the music and the product in a track like, “Carolina”, the almost 8-minute closing to the EP. The track features a hazy, airy sound that Girls captures so masterfully due to how conversely it reacts with the heavy nature of Owens’ embattled past. The polarizing, yet enthusiastic feeling that Broken Dreams Club gives us pushes them to a new level of greatness in the band’s young existence. Given that they have even more potential to tap into in the future, the possibilities are limitless.