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Music

Little Girls get big

LITTLE GIRLS at Sneaky Dee’s (431 College), October 29, $8, rotate.com and at the Phoenix (410 Sherbourne), November 20, $13, rotate.com.


Considering how gloomy and dark Little Girls’ echo-drenched fuzz pop sounds, you’d never guess that Josh McIntyre is such a cheerful and wholesome young guy. Chilling out at a dimly lit hotel bar during Pop Montreal, he’s all smiles and bouncy youthful energy, visibly excited that his debut full-length, Concepts (Paper Bag), is about to drop.

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“It’s got everything from the very first song I ever recorded as Little Girls to the very latest,” explains McIntyre as he sips his drink. “It’s basically the story from the point when I had no preconceived notion of what I wanted this music to be until now, when I’ve figured out what works and what I enjoy.”

Less than a year has passed since he first started working on his off-the-cuff home recordings, which garnered significant (and unexpected) blog love less than a week after he posted them on MySpace. This helps explain why he’s so refreshingly unjaded.

He’s released vinyl EPs with hip Brooklyn labels Mexican Summer and Captured Tracks and a digital EP with Paper Bag and toured with some of the most buzzed-about bands of the moment – not bad for a project he never expected anyone outside his circle of friends to hear.

Of course, taking your songs out of the bedroom and letting the world hear them means that you have to deal with strangers’ interpretations of them. McIntyre’s still puzzled that he’s being described as part of a new wave of goth surf bands.

“I guess it makes sense. There are twangy guitars and it’s dark,” he allows, “but it’s hard to listen to your music from a third-party perspective. I’m definitely not into goth culture in any way, and I don’t even own any surf records.”

Similarly, Little Girls are also frequently compared to lo-fi noise rockers No Age, despite the fact that there’s not much connecting them beyond a penchant for recording with the shitty built-in microphone of a laptop.

“It never occurred to me that someday I’d be talking to someone about what was going through my head when I decided to make a lo-fi record. I’m not even that big of a fan of them, but I do remember hearing that No Age disc. It definitely exposed me to the idea that I could make a good record without a lot of money. I thought to myself, ‘This band is doing well, so it must be possible to do it this way.'”

In the past, when asked why he chose muddy and distorted over clean and crisp, he blamed it on his lack of resources and equipment. We can’t resist pointing out that it’s completely possible to make a hi-fi-sounding recording with the same minimal gear he has at his disposal.

“It is easy to make a clean-sounding record with this equipment, but you can definitely tell the difference between that and a clean record made with good equipment. A lot of bands try for clean using shitty equipment and it just sounds kind of amateurish. I’d rather it sounded really dirty and raw.”

Interview Clips

Little Girls talks about the evolution from a solo studio project to a live band.

Download associated audio clip.

Little Girls explains how recording demos led to his lo-fi approach.

Download associated audio clip.

benjaminb@nowtoronto.com

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