Skinny Girls - 2013 - If I Am What You Want Sometimes

Ambient

[FOR FREE]

http://skinnygirls.bandcamp.com/

• 8 songs to download
• For free
• Direct Download
• Listening recommendations: Sugarbliss

Impressions

It's not often I get follow up records through our bandcamp scours, they tend to come from follow up emails or the artists themselves contacts us. Low and behold a Skinny Girls (who I last reviewed here) record comes down the pipe for me to explore. Kate Moss stalking is out this time around, and so too is the cold minimalist approach, here replaced with a warmer sound, a greater cohesiveness and structure to both song and record alike that outdoes its predecessor. The switch from away darker thematic content to something comparatively brighter affords Skinny Girls a different sonic palette to create with, well as much as music based entirely around keyboards and synthesizers stretching single notes out to infinity and layering them on top of each other can. Things do tend to remain minimalist, and as I said, all synthesizer based, but now instead of noise and industrial groans we get what I can only describe as New Age love songs. “Tired Smiles” is the song for two people exhausted from their day sitting in the same room, not speaking, simply content. The slow note changes give the song a hymn-like quality that really does put your mind at ease. Things, yeah things are good. Of course, a Skinny Girls record wouldn't be complete without one track that flies in the face of everything I just said, and “City Girl, I Hate Your Friends” is that song, sounding like a plane taking off in a vacuum cleaner it's the closest things get to “Kate Moss”. That ringing really jumps out at you after 4 tracks of relative calm. That being the case, “Song for The Spine” actually sticks out more that “City Girls”, sounding like Christmas music through a broken AM radio, all jangles and simple keyboard notes shrunk down to miniature. Skinny Girls have afforded themselves that kind of breathing room. Some will find the record boring, and there may be an argument to be made for that. If you're not on board by track 3, you can probably look elsewhere, but if you haven't left by then, sit back and let Skinny Girls do the rest. Certainly fans of Skinny Girls will enjoy, others approach with New Age-y care.