Track Review: Summertime by Girls

In this post I want to cover a track that hasn't been popping up too much in other reviews: "Summertime." All the tracks on the record are good, but I seriously got in a fetal position on the floor, turned up my speakers and let this song blow me away last night.

The track is a Girls standard in that it starts with a simple rhythm guitar and a great pop bassline. Owens enters, his voice fragile and expressive, lending depth to the deceptively simple lyrics. The song seems to be about a couple enjoying a perfect summer day. But like all of the songs, there is pathos hidden here. The "you" Owens is singing to/about is never rendered, conspicuously absent. The song is really about loneliness and memories, in the past tense ("get high like I used to do").

After the first verse, the guitars and synths explode into a shimmering riff, we enter the "feeling" of that lost summer day. Suddenly, the synths stop, and we are left with a solitary strumming of a rhythm guitar, as the musician once again becomes conscious off his loneliness. Owens' wonderful chorus returns and the song ends with a lone guitar chord. When you think about it, the song's structure is anything but traditional pop. There are verses and choruses, but in between the two halves comes a huge instrumental break. Songs like "Summertime" makes Album one of the best pop records of the last couple of years, and confirm its status as a real work of art.

mp3 girls Summertime (via HearYa)

Live performance from FADER TV