Girls rule

Image: Susan Seubert

Correspondence Course - The Hermit Crabs

You don't hear a lot of musical a-ha-moment stories, conversion narratives or even conversations in which music is an end to itself--as opposed to a gateway to friendship or romance or opportunity for personal branding--from and among girls. That might be changing, what with Lavinia Greenlaw's pointedly titled memoir The Importance of Music to Girls and, perhaps, a song like "Correspondence Course." I wrote about Glasgow's Hermit Crabs and their delightful "Feel Good Factor" two years ago and apparently that song wasn't a fluke: The newish Correspondence Course EP is start-to-finish pop delish. "Sing me something that I don't already know" is the song's key phase, a summing-up of this kismetted meeting of music-geek minds, "have you heard" exchanges and ok, yes, flirtation. Music is personal and social, natch. But name-dropping This Mortal Coil and plotting an instrumental combo ("I'll play guitar, she'll play cello") seems to signal a certain commitment to the thing and not just the relationship wound around it. The music's fantastic, of course. Sweet violin, chugging guitar, Melanie Whittle's great girlish voice and a chorus way catchier than anything I've ever heard from Camera Obscura's camp.

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