Girls - Hellhole Ratrace

Tommy F gets deep and talks us through one of his favourite songs of all time...


Girls' 2009 release 'Album' is among my favourite...albums of all time. At it's core, it's a selection of break-up songs sung in a a way that invokes images of early Beach Boys stuff, with a slightly off-key drum beat. But It's so much more than that.  Album is an expression of years of heartbreak, sorrow and repression, expressed in a collection of heart-jerking break up ballads.

It is clear that the break up, while the premise for the album, is merely a vessel for lead singer Christopher Owens to explore the tragic nature and events of his upbringing. Fuelled by copious amounts of pills and influenced by early punk among other things, Owens has constructed an complex album that moves me every time I play it.

Hellhole Ratrace is my favourite track from it.  From the opening line: "I'm sick and tired of the way that I feel, I'm always dreaming and it's never for real" to the steadily building crescendo: "But I don't wanna cry my whole life through, Yeah I wanna do some laughing to, so c'mon and laugh with me. And I don't wanna die, without shakin' up a leg or two, yeah I wanna do some dancing to, so c'mon and dance with me" this is a song that I can play over and over again.

The guitar follows suit, with a thick reverb building to climax that never quite happens. And all offset by an eerily effective off-beat drum sequence, giving the impression that this is not just the pining of a ditched lover, but a greater expression of the sorrow flooding the lead singer.

But that's enough warbling from me, play the song and hopefully, you will like it too!


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