Girls: "Lust For Life"

“Lust For Life,” the first single by Girls, is accurately named, unlike Girls, which consists San Franciscans Christopher Owens and Chet White. It’s a song about wanting simple things wanted in a million pop songs before it—Owens laments his lack of a “pizza and a bottle of wine” and wants to “make a brand new start in love”—and its delivery is all ringing upper-register chords, handclaps, and backing vocals that go ba-ba-ba.

But Christopher Owens self-describes as “fucked in the head,” and it’s apparent, even on one of their forthcoming Album‘s shortest, most immediate songs, that Girls is the sound of melancholic weirdos taking on the task of writing concise guitar pop and getting wrapped up in half a dozen other things along the way. Owens delivers his lines with a quasi-Elvis Costello snarl, and it’s more or less a given that he’s not going to get what he wants, since no narrator like Owens’ ever does. Despite this, the song carries an undeniable optimism, making good on its title by way of White’s big, textured production and the fact that Owens really does sound like he wants to make this whole thing work out after all. Whether or not that’s even possible is another question, but there’s something irresistible in their attempt to make good.