Lessons in Fun-etics: Horsegirl’s “Phonetics On & On”
Graphic by Sofia Giarrusso
by Christian Jones
It is November 2019. Chicago’s pre-pandemic community of teenage creatives is flourishing. TACO (Teen Artists’ Creative Oasis) is promoting their new event—Tacoween—a holiday house show complete with an open mic and purchasable art made by teens across the city. This is where I first saw Horsegirl. A group of 30 or so crowd the room of the living room. Clad in The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox costumes, they walk on stage quietly and the crowd gets hushed. They play their first-ever single, “Forecast.” It is an immediate hit. People cheer and whoop throughout the shredding. It was unlike any of the other bands on the scene I had heard—like Corn on My Dinner Plate, who excelled at woozy psych pop. I could hear the influences of Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, and shoegaze, the music I had just begun to discover and love. “Sea Life Sandwich Boy” follows, and by the end of the crashing drone, everyone could feel the magic. I remember thinking in that moment: Wow, they actually have it.
Horsegirl played at more shows and venues—Thalia Hall, Shuga Records, the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago), the Square Roots Festival, and more house shows—building a name for themselves among Chicago teens as the band to see. All the while, they were ripping with and learning from other bands of the “Hallogallo” scene: Lifeguard, Friko, Dwaal Troupe, Free Range, and Post Office Winter. Everything changed for Horsegirl when they were featured in a Chicago Tribune piece, gaining them national exposure. And by 2021, they were signed (along with fellow Hallogallo band Lifeguard) to the prestigious indie label that represents many of their idols—Matador Records.
Horsegirl’s first album, Versions of Modern Performance (2022), proved they could be “noisy” and defy the expectations placed on younger girl bands. The project catapulted them into international recognition: they played at Coachella, Pitchfork festival, and Lollapalooza, while also opening for Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Wilco, and the Breeders, simultaneously touring Europe and North America. Versions paid homage to all their myriad inspirations, but with a distinct flair. Tracks “Billy” and “Option 8” buzzed with shoegaze haze—the latter replete with Interpol’s monochromatic suave. The opening track “Anti-glory” was an instant anthem. And “Beautiful Song” foreshadowed the twee lyricism that Horsegirl leaned into for their recent release. Essentially, Versions was grandiose: a love letter as wide as a landscape, as long as a decade.
Horsegirl pulls back on their sophomore record, Phonetics On & On, finding their own voice in minimalist arrangements crafted under producer Cate Le Bon’s guidance. Le Bon’s advice to Horsegirl largely centered on cutting back and embracing experimentation. This led them to create with violin, synths, and chopped-up guitar. Their danceable singles “2468” and “Switch Over” are an exciting hop, skip, and jump in a new sonic direction—some mélange of playful folk, upbeat jangle pop, and post-punk poetics.
At times flat-out obscure and other times interpretable, Phonetics playfully treads between moody and meaningful lyricism. On standout track “Information Content,” Cheng chirps wistfully “ahoo ahoo ahoo” like a cuckoo over the ticking clock of a guitar solo. She sings, “I’m translating my talk to tones,” but it’s not just here—on the whole album. Pretty much every song features some variation of a “non-lexical vocable,” which is a fancy way of classifying “la la la.” Horsegirl’s vocables match the same playful spirit as Life Without Buildings or Gertrude Stein, but as delivered by a little girl chewing sounds like bubblegum, sometimes humming herself to sleep at night. Perhaps she dreams of the Belle & Sebastian-esque storybook shepherd of “Rock City,” who wants to drive a flower truck because the smell will make people happy.
Linguistic play doesn’t stop Horsegirl from delivering meaningful lines though. Another standout, “In Twos,” is a gorgeous melancholic ballad. The echoey bassline pulses like a heartbeat, some distant nod to Arthur Russel’s “Answer Me.” Lowenstein’s voice oscillates ever-subtly between hope and heaviness as she repeats ninefold: “and I try.” The entire song aches with the polarity of loss, appreciation and mourning separated only by a line break: “every good thing that I find / I find I lose.” On “Julie,” above Reece’s synth bed and Cheng’s cat-like guitars, Lowenstein sings, “I have so many mistakes to make / Mistakes to make with you, you know I want them too.” Lowenstein describes the track as a love song that is also about existing in a new city: “feeling of young adulthood…being overwhelmed by how new everything is, but then also…the excitement of it all.” Horsegirl is getting personal, but striking a Jessica Pratt-like balance between confession and obfuscation.
Despite Reece, Lowenstein, and Cheng all living in New York, where the latter two are studying at NYU, the music video for “Frontrunner” is an homage to quintessential Chicago spots: Diner Grill, the L, Big Apple Finer Foods. It’s also honest fun, a reminder that sometimes making a spontaneous short film with your friends, like you did on iMovie as kids, can be as exciting as anything that production could buy. This creative approach of play is at the heart of the album and shows that despite their professional resources, Horsegirl has never lost touch with the DIY spirit, phenomenal taste, and Chicago roots that makes them who they are.