Horsegirl open their second album, Phonetics On and On, with a question. On the jaunty “Where’d You Go?,” singer-guitarist Penelope Lowenstein poses that titular query and is immediately answered by singer-guitarist Nora Cheng: “Far, far, far away.” No longer high schoolers, the members of the Chicago-formed indie-rock trio moved across the country for college, temporarily abandoning that city’s nearly fairytale youth scene. While drummer Gigi Reece, the oldest of the three musicians, crafts zines and waits for the others to graduate, Lowenstein and Cheng have immersed themselves in their English majors at New York University, fawning over linguistics and using the new album as a sonic playground to rearrange syllables.
Phonetics On and On is a home-away-from-home album, capturing all the freedom, uncertainty, and change that comes with the replanting of a flag. Trading vocal duties on songs, Lowenstein and Cheng sing about awkward crushes (“Well I Know You’re Shy”) and the ambiguities of adulthood (“In Twos”), albeit in the cryptic language of a heavily redacted diary. Through those blacked-out passages emerge peculiar characters, like a welder righting a pipe or a shepherd driving a flower truck because it smells nice. When Horsegirl do switch into first person, their habits masquerade as Gen X realities: waking up to the radio, shaking hands when parting ways. Though Horsegirl have never lacked confidence, lyrically they seem caught in a fog; if you like that opacity as much as they do, then swatting through the air to find sharper meaning is a brain-teasing classroom exercise.
Consider their constant use of non-lexical vocables like “do” and “fa la la.” Those aren’t just harmonic filler, though they function exceedingly well as such in Lowenstein and Cheng’s minimalist delivery, but rather an intentional deconstruction of the building blocks of language. Hence “Information Content” operating like a guidebook to the whole album. Cheng explains her textural choices (“I’m translating my talk to tones”) and encourages listeners to develop their own interpretations or get lost in the blank space (“All you got’s ahoo ahoo ahoo/’Cause all I give’s ahoo ahoo ahoo”).
Much of Horsegirl’s initial heralding, especially the critical enthusiasm for Versions of Modern Performance, stemmed from how astutely they studied indie rock legends and obscure ’90s bands, going so far as to host Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley on that album. Though the trio dreamed of—and succeeded in—getting signed to Matador, Phonetics On and On drifts towards the softer, rubbery twee of Flying Nun, Electrelane, and Stereolab. The country twang over acoustic strumming on “Frontrunner” and the chipper vocal melodies of “Switch Over” draw a line to Horsegirl’s newfound appreciation for classic songwriters like Bob Dylan and Al Green. Horsegirl remain standout students when it comes to music history, but the band’s application of its well-honed taste rarely feels like cribbing.
