It is so easy to take pot shots at Glasgow indie rock bands. Such is their general lack of individuality that, for too many of them, their key achievement is to persuade many a reviewer that he has prematurely contracted a degenerative mental condition that renders all the same. How therefore do IT GIRL (do the capital letters have a significance that exceeds a faulty keyboard?) manage to stand out from the crowd?
Is it the drumming? Probably not, for drifting between the twin evils of show band four on the floor to metronomic precision is nothing unusual these days. The guitars then? Not if you’ve heard early Simple Minds or Goodbye Mr McKenzie. The vocals? Those flattened out refrains have been big in Manchester since Factory was open.
No, the secret weapon in the IT GIRL arsenal is pleasingly obvious. They take a song like “Neon Signs” and start it off like any other indie rock originality massacre then twist it into something full of full on attitude. Something with a direction that takes them away from easy street. For further proof, “Human Touch” is by no means an easy song to like yet IT GIRL bravely advertise the song’s bleakness throughout and, even in their upbeat moments such as “Firelight”, IT GIRL transcend the grey ghost of Glasgow past by injecting it with white powdered style.
IT GIRL should make more than a few friends on downbeat indie dance floors with these songs and they also herald the return of something not seen for a while in these parts and that is STYLE. Bring on the remixes!
The album is available on a pay what you can basis from Bandcamp.