Phonetics On and On by Horsegirl
In the three years between Horsegirl’s first album, Versions of Modern Performance, and its second, Phonetics On and On, the indie-rock group’s members—drummer Gigi Reece and singers and guitarists Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein—have shifted well into college age and moved from Chicago to New York City.
Those are not small changes, and a brief return to Chicago to record the second album is not a backward step, at least not with Cate Le Bon helming the production. The Welsh musician, who notably also produced Wilco’s 2023 full-length, Cousin, provides Horsegirl the space to clarify its maturation.
And clarity is the key. If Versions had enough amplified fuzz to clog the filter of an air purifier, and enough reverb to bounce around a Piper Cub hangar, then Phonetics is as sharp and clean as the view of the stars on a dry winter night.
Warmer than winter, fortunately: shorn of echoes and other effects, the vocals—Cheng’s shyly pretty, Lowenstein’s low and raspy—come across as conversational whether delivered individually or in tandem, giving the metronomic ring of “Julie” and the midtempo early-R.E.M. bounce of “I Can’t Stand to See You” a sense of directly addressing one person.
The taut musicianship italicizes that sense. Even at their most frenetic, Lowenstein and Cheng strum and pick with intent, and, even at her greatest force, Reece prefers to caress rather than bash the kit.
With hints of influences like The Strokes (the relatively furious solo chords in “Where’d You Go?”), Liz Phair (the blunt earnestness of “Well I Know You’re Shy”) and Stereolab (when they harmonize, Cheng and Lowenstein could be cool American cousins to Lætitia Sadier), Horsegirl has obviously absorbed alternative rock from the Velvet Underground onwards.
Horsegirl is just as obviously reaching beyond influences. Three years between albums isn’t long, but it can be vast when those years move such creatively restless musicians into full adulthood.
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