Ask any provisional-license-holding teenage boy, and he’ll tell you with a smile that girls love cars. Perhaps it also works vice-versa. This youthful mischievousness is something that Cars Love Girls have wholly introduced into their début album, Skip School – another nod to the nostalgic hey-day.
Bres, er, Breslin, takes guitar while he shares the labour of vocals with his sister Orla. You may have already stumbled across these siblings at some stage. As a founding member of the Republic of Loose, Bres has provided a huge input into many of the collective’s hit songs. Orla also joined the band in 2006 as a vocalist, but in this project, some might say, they’ve cut Loose (I had to).
The result is a solid collection of bopping 80s disco hooks, harmonies and synths. There’s never a dull moment, which is almost to its detriment. As in, it’s a musical salad, with a cheesy under-layer you’re hoping your fork will never hit, or at least could be eaten around—but of course, there’s always that bit that gets away and pollutes the top layer. You’re not going to give up on the rest of the deliciousness over a stray bit of heady cheddar. Skip School is a glitzy showcase of retro-lectro with infusions of dizzying electric guitar solos, luxurious sax, and daintily shrill vocals. It’s different, an experiment of sound, and God is it an interesting one.
Lyrics are champion in this retro time warp, clearly articulated and often witty, never complacent or nonsensical. What’s On My Mind, immediately sets the scene of a disco age gone by, but relies heavily on the influence of early 90s r’n’b to give it a fresh spritz of cool. Seductive groove guitars and elaborate piano make way for Orla’s almost robotic vocal, providing the perfect introduction to the vibe about to smack us in the mouth.
With its saccharine-sweet vocals strung along elongated “yooou, giiiiiirl”’s, These Girls is so cheerful, that it’s almost a parody of feel-good pop. A similar approach is taken with Future Ex Wife, where the hook is so over-inflated that it sounds like a Cartman piss-take. Immediately angered, my sugar induced tooth-ache soon evaporates as the track provides more than one smile. The high-pitched “I just met my future ex-wife and I really want to get to know that girl,” is brought back down to earth by perfect instrumentals, a crisp and layered disco cocktail of bouncing percussion. Floaty hooks conjure images of a pungently bright beach scene, borrowing heavily from Aqua’s aesthetics, but Prince’s musical influence.
Never Gonna Get It is a boy/girl vocal relay, with the siblings singing “La la la la la” like demented children. It’s feel-good, but the sinister undertone of deadpan hooks, makes it one of the better tracks on the album. Skipping around each other vocally is a preference of the two, and they pull it off seamlessly. Street Song is another example, covered in moaning bass-lines under glittering percussion and diva-eqsue harmonies.
Cars Love Girls is an all out show tune. The thud of drums opens to a chorus-like vocal behind what sounds like a trumpet ground through auto-tune. It’s musical theatre, if musical theatre took place inside an early 90s MS-DOS computer. The confidence in sound that Cars Love Girls have in their first record is staggeringly accomplished. It’s clear the siblings are comfortable in their style, having established themselves somewhat in the industry already.
Skip School’s album cover is a screwball collage of colour and 80s paraphernalia, and what’s inside is almost as crazy as the exterior. In fact, it’s one of the most perfectly matched covers I’ve seen in a while. Shitty relationships have never sounded so fantastically fun.