Jealous Girlfriends
emo-porn yatch rock
by Maria Schettino

With a uniquely combined vision, The Jealous Girlfriends have gone from a symbiotic duo to a freakish mutualistic quartet.  Looking slightly more interesting than your average indie band, highlighted by grotesque yellow lights in candid Dave Sitek photographs, they avoid the typical descriptions and journalistic shorthand. Giving her the chance to define the band's genre, dark-haired Holly Miranda called it "Elmo-Porn Yatch Rock." In less salacious terms, they are kind of post punk experimental shoegazy band with an endearing identity crisis. Motivated by their own madness, they have steadily added and rearranged members and wrangled affectionately with each other’s songs to make the dreamy, catchy JG hooks that stick to you memory gland like putty.

            Under the guise of a kickboxing school, through the mysterious locked door and down a long chilly hallway, Headgear Recording is revealed in the depths of a prized Williamsburg structure only steps from the east river and even closer to the infamous cocaine biker bar. Inside the studio, warmed by the flames of the elevated space heater, the Jealous Girlfriends were born out of the proverbial “bullshitting” of wandering singer Holly Miranda and Studio Owner/Producer Alex Lipsen. Having the distinct privilege of being like-minded, they embarked on a recording project that would flower into The Jealous Girlfriends.
           
            Finding spare moments in the famed headgear whose sound-proofed walls have vibrated with the sounds of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio and Son Volt {to name a few}, they carefully constructed their first release, "Comfortably Uncomfortable," a haunting composition that reverberates moments of stillness and aggression. Inspired by true events, from Brooklyn with love, all eight tracks are stories told from different perspectives and influence bound by the exquisite underpinning of unrequited love.
From this sweet beginning, the band was properly transformed with the introduction of drummer Josh Abbot. Intern turned Studio Manager at Headgear; Josh was a transplant from Massachusetts whose drumming fit tightly in the pocket of most hipster jeans. More jarring still was his ability to sing and write great songs. "He was all cute and red and eager and wicked behind the drums," Holly recalls, "So we became a three piece. Then one night at rehearsal working on new tunes he opened his little mouth and sang. Woah!"  As the transformation commenced, Ms. Miranda traded her acoustic guitar for a gifted blue telecaster and joined the legions of guitar players that revere guitar pedals as crack. The new sound was noisier, louder and generally more rockin' taking on a kind of garage Indie vibe balanced by Alex's eerie keyboards and the combined signal of two voices. Josh and Holly as co-conspiriting 'lead' singers on the soon to be released (yet to be titled) record, embraced their shared duty as an opportunity. Holly admits,  "I think it challenges both of us and the harmonies and layering you can do with two vocals is way more interesting."
"Two heads are better than one I guess," adds josh,  "I think that at this point it has become pretty blurry as to who is the lead singer, but that's why it's cool.  A lot of my favorite bands are ones that have more than one singer.  It's just so great to have more than one perspective and more than one sound." 
As a trio, the collaborations commenced and The Jealous Girlfriends became a veritable brain trust of wacky innovations. On a path to becoming as Josh says "Louder and louder and weirder and weirder," he was compelled to trade his sticks for a wily axe and join Holly at the front of the stage. Thwarting the patterns that drums were boxing him into, he gained a new freedom on guitar: "On guitar I don't know what the fuck I’m doing.  It's so great.  It just allows me to be so much more stream of consciousness - or at least I can make way more of an irritating racket with the fucking thing." Appeasing disgruntled soundmen/woman with a distaste for singing drummers, Josh passed the thrown to JG's newest member, skin-smacker Mike Fadem. "Seriously he is one of the most solid and musical drummers I have ever played with," gushes Josh of his replacement, "When we play with him I just feel like no matter what happens mike will always do a great job.  I trust him completely."

The beauty of The Jealous Girlfriends is that they exploit being a team like no other. "Basically we all sabotage the hell out of each others songs and that's how we end up sounding the way we do.  It's pretty funny considering the fact that we are actually called The Jealous Girlfriends, but seriously everyone is pretty well represented on this record. [Josh] " A true collective, they have designed something that is constantly mutating adhering only to the Miranda mantra that Change should be the only constant. "Our influences are so diverse that I don't think we will ever do the same thing over and over again. I don't want to. We all do many different things besides this band as well. Alex produces all kind of friend’s bands records. Mike plays in a million billion other bands. Josh has Feathers No Bird. I have Raven Mayhem. Our hearts are all over the place." Josh concedes that The Jealous Girlfriend's sound is far from being defined as such: "I don't think we've reached that point at all.  This record was just the first attempt at collaborating with one another.  I hope we continue to change forever.  I think that's what keeps things fresh and interesting and ultimately that's what will keep us together."
 
"We make the music we like and feel," says Miranda, "not just music we think is cool. We aren't going out of our way to sound like something else. We are willing to put it on the line and look like an ass clown if the moment calls for it... and it does."
With a super solid drummer, a keyboard player from “outer space” and two bizarrely talented singers all in collaboration as songwriters, the results are volatile and refreshingly limitless. "It's more about just doing something different all the time," says Josh,  "I get bored easily.  I think our band has the mentality that it will try anything once.  The first record that Holly and Alex made together was pretty mellow, so when we became a band there was this sort of antagonistic side of us that just wanted to be as loud and stupid as possible.  Its just fun to not always do what people want or expect from you."
 Following in the wake of a captivating and beautiful record ("Comfortably Uncomfortable"), the new line-up has a lot to live up to. The question of whether this new incarnation is better than it's original is met with a resounding "Definitely!" And so the band plods on into the unknown secured by their friendship and galvanized by an enduring commitment to making music that not only challenges themselves to be creatively unbound, but their listeners as well.