What I always liked about The Girls apart from them being hapless represantatives of the sunny loveable mint ice cream dimension impossible to reach from where we are was that painfully real sense of being wounded when in love. How the world around appears to be so hopelessly wastedly beautiful. Simple but I still can't say it right, only Christopher Owens can say it right. And that's what he does.
Father, Son, Holy Ghost is the best title Girls could choose for their second album. Timeless, obvious, great title for a great record. And yep, these black tight leather pants, black crop top, Girls denim jacket and the Deathly Hallows symbol on his neck in a new video are so cool.

When I call Girls frontman Christopher Owens, he's bedridden for the third straight day. What's wrong with him? "Well, there are a lot of things wrong with me," he says with a chuckle. But he's not kidding. The singer-songwriter is in the thick of a self-imposed pre-tour drug withdrawal.
"I struggle with an addiction to serious, very heavy opiates," he says later on in the conversation. "Getting rid of this shit is literally the worst hell you can imagine. I don't know why I always go back to it, but I do." The admission isn't as surprising, perhaps, as it should be-- the 32 year old has made a point to keep his music and his life as honest as possible, even if that means telling strangers about his darkest addictions. This openness is inviting, though, and it's all over Girls' strikingly unguarded songs, which tell of love and loss with the wide-eyed naïvteté of someone half Owens' age.
By now, the singer's eccentric back story-- he was raised in the well-meaning but ultimately dangerous and perverse Children of God religious cult before breaking away and subsequently being taken in by Texas artist Stanley Marsh 3-- is something of indie rock lore, and Owens doesn't back away from it. Several songs on Girls' new sophomore album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, deal with Owens' fraught and complicated relationship with his mother, who allowed another son to die of pneumonia because of Children of God's anti-medicine stance and prostituted herself in Owens' presence while he was growing up. (She has since left the cult as well.) When he sings, "I'm looking for meaning in life, and you my ma," on the new record, you can hear the confusion of his experience as well as universal empathy.

Pitchfork: There are some very talented gospel back-up singers on Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and when you contrast them with your relatively small voice, it can sound...
Father, Son, Holy Ghost is the best title Girls could choose for their second album. Timeless, obvious, great title for a great record. And yep, these black tight leather pants, black crop top, Girls denim jacket and the Deathly Hallows symbol on his neck in a new video are so cool.

When I call Girls frontman Christopher Owens, he's bedridden for the third straight day. What's wrong with him? "Well, there are a lot of things wrong with me," he says with a chuckle. But he's not kidding. The singer-songwriter is in the thick of a self-imposed pre-tour drug withdrawal.
"I struggle with an addiction to serious, very heavy opiates," he says later on in the conversation. "Getting rid of this shit is literally the worst hell you can imagine. I don't know why I always go back to it, but I do." The admission isn't as surprising, perhaps, as it should be-- the 32 year old has made a point to keep his music and his life as honest as possible, even if that means telling strangers about his darkest addictions. This openness is inviting, though, and it's all over Girls' strikingly unguarded songs, which tell of love and loss with the wide-eyed naïvteté of someone half Owens' age.
By now, the singer's eccentric back story-- he was raised in the well-meaning but ultimately dangerous and perverse Children of God religious cult before breaking away and subsequently being taken in by Texas artist Stanley Marsh 3-- is something of indie rock lore, and Owens doesn't back away from it. Several songs on Girls' new sophomore album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, deal with Owens' fraught and complicated relationship with his mother, who allowed another son to die of pneumonia because of Children of God's anti-medicine stance and prostituted herself in Owens' presence while he was growing up. (She has since left the cult as well.) When he sings, "I'm looking for meaning in life, and you my ma," on the new record, you can hear the confusion of his experience as well as universal empathy.

Pitchfork: There are some very talented gospel back-up singers on Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and when you contrast them with your relatively small voice, it can sound...
Christopher Owens: ...funny! I know what you're talking about, and it's part of my neurosis. I was very much aware from the first recording we did that my voice sucks. It's fun to perform and be a singer, but writing songs is what really makes me happy. While we were recording this album I sent a Tweet to Justin Bieber: "Hey Justin, I'm the lead singer of Girls and you should come be the singer in our band. It'd be great for your career." Imagine that-- he'd be like the new Julian Casablancas! I'd give him all my songs and he'd sell millions of records. He would do a better job on vocals and I would be happy watching the shows from the side and writing songs for him. But he never replied. I knew he wouldn't, but I was dead serious. And what I was acknowledging with the Tweet was that everything on this album had jumped up in quality except the singing. But those are the breaks, man.