Girlpool
Trumpet Blossom Cafe — Friday, Oct. 16 at 9 p.m.
Teenagers Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad make up Girlpool an indie punk rock duo based out of Philadelphia. The pair will stop at the Trumpet Blossom in Iowa City this Friday at 9 p.m. while on an extensive North American tour for their debut album, Before the World Was Big.
The base of their music relies on light, harmonious, lullaby-like loops broken apart by seamlessly doled out angsty shouts. Their guitars, one bass and one electric, complement each other perfectly, creating well-rounded songs with only two instruments. Their short and sweet songs playfully touch on life as a teenage girl, revolving around the nuances of modern love and finding understanding in the world.
Fans of Girlpool’s self-titled EP (including Willow Smith) who are unfamiliar with Before the World Was Big may be in for a surprise. While their new songs maintain the rawness and vulnerability for which the band gained so much notoriety, Before the World Was Big reigns in the punk-rock and realigns closer to indie-rock. The album sounds refined compared to Girlpool, but maintains the grittiness as their light and airy vocals repeat slowly, gaining volume and slight distortion until lyrics are nearly unrecognizable and you’re unknowingly shouting along. With this album, Tividad and Tucker have made themselves more accessible, replacing songs like “Slutmouth” with the slightly more ambiguous “Cherry Picking.”
This intimate show at the Trumpet Blossom will cut off at 100 people, so we recommend getting there early.
Photo by Paul Hudson
