Imagine you're in the middle of a desert at two in the morning. All around you is miles and miles of void. Only the moonlight and cloud shadows color the ground; nothing but a few cacti and animal carcasses lay scattered across the desert floor. Up above, the night sky sparkles brilliantly. You feel empty, cold, alone, but somehow connected to a bigger universe, to something meaningful that is just out of reach.
As heady as this sounds, it is as close as I can come to describing the experience of listening to Warpaint's debut full-length album, "The Fool," released by Rough Trade this month.
In this ghostly, psychedelic album from the Los Angeles all-female quartet, the listener can easily get lost in the layered cosmos of sounds, reverb, harmonies, cooing, tribal percussion and staccato lyrics (for a better idea of what I mean, I suggest watching their video for the song "Stars").
The band is composed of four best friends: Emily Kokal (vocals and guitar), Theresa Wayman (guitar and vocals), Jenny Lee Lindberg (bass/vocals), and Stella Mozgawa (drums). This band kills it live—I saw them play in the summer of 2009 while living in L.A.—its members singing and strumming and drumming with heads bobbing, eyes shut, backs bent over their instruments as though they're possessed by the sound. They are a band in which each member acts as a crucial component of the whole. Warpaint is a female force to be reckoned with—a band that is unabashedly proud of its femininity and courageous in proclaiming female empowerment while also voicing the insecurities that we all (girls in particular) share.
Most of their songs are about love, independence, self-confidence, relationships and breakups (see "Majesty"). Although all these topics seem to scream girl, they are handled with such rock star finesse that they fit better in the arena of universal relevance. It's therefore difficult to lump Warpaint in with other "girl bands." They rock out too hard, sing too loudly, groan and beat a passion into their songs that makes it impossible to confuse their music with typical chick pop or rock.
The album certainly doesn't lack in diversity or scope and contains everything from acoustic ballads like "Baby" to electronic-rock anthems like "Bees."
Favorite tracks include the aptly named post-punk anthem, "Composure," which features chanting vocals of "Hang tight, hang tight, hang tight...how can I keep my composure?" built atop gently throbbing bass and drum and accented by faster-paced verses. "Shadows" is a cyclical song, beginning with the gentle strumming of a lo-fi acoustic guitar topped by ethereal, reverb-heavy vocals and a sequence of coos before climaxing (complete with drums and bass) with "What was the answer that you wanted me to find out? The lies, the lies, the lies, the lies!" and then returning to acoustic again. They are a band that clearly utilizes production in their album, but definitely doesn't depend on it. Their songs are quality both in their acoustic and lo-fi, post-production forms. I highly suggest checking out some of their acoustic Youtube videos.
For anyone who enjoys the somewhat tribal sounds of Merrill Garbus' tUnE-yArDs, this is an album to check out. The difference, however, is that while Garbus relies primarily on her ukulele and a voice recorder, Warpaint compiles guitars, bass, drums and vocals destined to send its listeners into a state of hypnosis. Comparisons can also be made between Evanescence (yikes) and Glasser.
So yes, Warpaint is a girl band, and they're proud of it. These girls are like the seductive sirens of today's post-punk world; their music is dripping with sexy sophistication that will trap even skeptical listeners in their artistic artifice. In "The Fool," Warpaint has successfully affirmed what Stevie Nicks, Joan Baez, Jenny Lewis, Feist, Nico Case, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Cat Power have been teaching us for years: that female rock stardom is an excellent platform for female empowerment, artistic liberation and damn good music.