Reviews

Girlsperm The Muse Ascends LP

The return to GIRLSPERM! Five years after their debut LP, Layla, Marissa, and Tobi are back with The Muse Ascends, and it continues to be a tall order to describe the band without employing the term “girl gang.” The GIRLSPERM turf stretches directly between the feminist/minimalist no wave territory of ROSA YEMEN/Y PANTS and the ’90s agit-punk revolutionary racket of Slampt Records, with sloganeering vocals (almost always presented in a unified front of ecstatic three-part shouts), treble-sharpened switchblade stabs of twin guitar, and a structural austerity within their concise art-punk outbursts that demands each member’s instrumental contributions be placed on completely equal footing, engaging in a sonic call-and-response trust dialogue with one another as a means of defense against the squares and creeps of the world. When they subvert the signature organ riff from the ARCHIES’ bubblegum smash “Sugar Sugar” into a halting single-string anti-solo on “Sugarcide,” it’s a clear statement of intent—the history of rock music as we know it only exists to be reshaped in GIRLSPERM’s image.