INTERVIEW: The Devil Works Hard, But Girl And Girl Work Harder
Interview by Emma Newbury
Photo by Charlie Falconer
With their alternative but gaiety sound and style that strokes androgyny, local band Girl and Girl have swept us off our feet once again with their brand new single ‘Dance Now’, from their first upcoming album Divorce.
From their humble roots throughout the Gold Coast’s pubs and dive bars, Girl and Girl have expanded their sound to the Brisbane music scene, and are absolutely taking over. Performing at Hot Dreams Festival alongside Lucy Dacus and Cate le Bon, Sunday Harvest, and Brisbane’s esteemed Mountain Goat Valley Crawl would be naming only the tip of the iceberg of what Girl and Girl have been up to in the past year, let alone a studio session to record their first full-length album Divorce. The devil works hard, but Girl and Girl work harder clearly.
With a bit of free time finally on their hands, we chatted to the band about how 2022 has been treating them, and how the Girl and Girl sound has developed with the season’s new releases blooming into view.
Hey Girl and Girl! What’s happening in your neck of the woods?
Hey Emma! I literally just got off the phone with my mechanic, and he described to me the $6000 worth of damage he’d found inside my $1000 car, which totally sucks. But other than that, we’re cruising along, getting ready for a whole lot of really punk stuff.
Firstly, we’ve got to ask… What inspired the band name Girl and Girl?
It started as something I accidentally said, and I liked the sound of it, the symmetry of the words etc, but now days, for me anyway, I like to think of the band as a front for me to explore my feminine side, i get to dress in all these new exciting ways, things i wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing without the confidence that the band provides, and i think that ties really nicely into the name.
Now onto your latest single ‘Dance Now’, you’ve played this song at your live shows since what seems like the very beginning of Girl and Girl. How long ago was this song actually written? Could you tell us about the process of this.
I have a recording of the outro dated oct 2020, so it's probably been fully structured for a bit over a year and I've been living up Meanjin way for a bit over a year now too, so we would’ve been playing it for the whole period we’ve been most active here. That’s a pretty standard procedure for us, we’ll have a track for quite some time before it’s recorded, mostly because we can’t afford to jump into the studio after every new song that’s written, we try to do them in batches.
What inspired ‘Dance Now’? It feels like it’s got a very simple structure combined with that beautiful heavy guitar. Where did this signature new wave sound come from?
So Coby, our previous bassist, wrote the bassline, and then he and I structured the rest of the song together. It's definitely simple, and repetitive, but the Coby’s bass riff is very infectious and I think the vocal and lead guitar dynamics help keep it interesting.
What does the track mean to you all?
I wrote my bits about my girlfriend at the time, and Coby wrote his about his girlfriend. So it's basically a celebration of love.
How has the reception from ‘Dance Now’ been?
Literally incredible. An astonishing amount of support from community radio, especially 4ZZZ, which has filled our hearts with a whole lot of joy. There's also been a huge amount of Spotify love which is really nice too!
Girl and Girl have been playing nonstop for a couple months now and you guys are finally able to relax a little bit while Jaydos is in Europe. What does the rest of the year look like for Girl and Girl? Can you reveal any sneaky things coming up?
Yea it's been insane! I think we played 10 shows in April alone, so a break has been really nice. That being said, we’re all so excited to get back at it. We’ve got new music releasing, I think 3 days after jaydos returns, which means a super punk release show at black bear on August 5th, with heaps of fun things planned there. And then it's pretty much gangbusters from there on out until the end of the year, huge show at the zoo on August 19th, celebrating colossus record’s 4th birthday with Mini Skirt, Square and Doggie heaven, springtime fest in early sept + heaps more super exciting stuff we’re yet to announce and working really hard on i.e. our biggest ever tour etc etc
‘Dance Now’ is your only single so far from the upcoming album Divorce. Is there any chance you could tell us a little more about the upcoming release?
Garden Song will also feature on the EP ! and there’s a third single ‘Divorce 2’ set to release August 3rd. It’s a somber, theatrical, vampiresque delve into, you guess it, my parents divorce. There’s also an accompanying film clip which we have put so much time and effort into, inspired by the final scene in ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’. The full EP is set to release mid-September, and it’ll feature 3 unheard tracks, including the title track, the prequel to divorce 2, divorce 1, which is 7 minutes long! And that one's a shoe-gazey, arcade fire-esque look into my parents divorce.
Lastly, as fellow Meanjn residents, it’s only fitting we do a few quick fire questions about our beloved city!
Favourite venue?
Blackbear #forever
Favourite record store?
Jet Black Cat Music !!
Best place to grab a coffee?
Lucky Duck
Favourite up-and-coming Meeanjin act?
SQUARE
Stream ‘Dance Now’