Warpaint's The Fool: My girl band dream comes true

Warpaint: Mozgawa, Lindberg, Wayman and Kokal

Not all that long ago, I wondered on this blog about the state of women in rock. When I looked out across the vast expanse of rock, I saw very few women in meaningful roles in bands.  My last favorite girl rock group was Elastica, which put out its best album in 1995.... A long time ago.

In the meantime, I'd settled with Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino, a nice songwriter with a record, Crazy for You, that I generally liked. But I wasn't in love. It wasn't her, it was me. Best Coast is, well, nice and all, but there's nothing dangerous or mysterious about the band.  You can only get so into a set of Beach Boys inspired tunes about lost boyfriends. Sorry, Bethany. (We're still friends, though.)

My eyes (and ears) had been wandering, looking for something new. And I'm happy to say that I've finally found what I've been looking for: a girl band to really be crazy for. Warpaint, a guitar-driven quartet of ladies from Los Angeles, released its debut record, The Fool, last Tuesday. It was love at first listen.


Warpaint,  consisting of singer/guitarist Emily Kokal, guitarist/vocalist Theresa Wayman, bassist/vocalist Jenny Lee Lindberg and drummer Stella Mozgawa, was formed almost seven years ago (Mazgawa, though, joined late last year). The band recorded a buzzed about EP, Exquisite Corpse last year which finally earned them a record deal with the venerable UK indie label Rough Trade. The dues paid show up on The Fool, a nine-song set of accomplished musical craft that shows off the fact that this is not just a band of pretty faces. Warpaint can bring it.

So how much do I love Warpaint? Let me count the ways.

1: A fantastic rhythm section: Lots of ladies in rock bands pick up bass playing duties (Sonic Youth, The Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins, Silver Sun Pickups, The Veils ...  even White Zombie) in a sense that always seems like some sort of gender-based affirmative action maneuver. They're the singer's girlfriend or a just a hot chick that the band wants on stage. Lindberg and Mozgawa are no such thing. It's no accident that the first track, "Set Your Arms Down," starts with nothing but a strumming bass chord riff and drums. The duo are absolutely fantastic on the whip-snap middle section of "Composure." From from spacey grooves to full on speed-funk riffs, from song to song, these ladies are always in the driver's seat.

2. Ambitious and imaginative song craft:  You're not going to hear much Warpaint on the radio any time soon. While lots of their indie peers are exploring old pop forms and sounds, Warpaint hardly bother with recognizable song structures like choruses, verses, etc. Instead each song -- not one less than 5 minutes long -- is a laborious construction of parts that have a tendency to veer mid-song into instrumental jams that never falter into the kind of loose noodling that mars many a so-called jam band outing. Their first single, "Undertow," has something close to a chorus-like hook, but over almost six minutes the song constantly builds until it swirls into a drum-driven climax that resemble the song at its start. No, there's no routine, each song is a thrill ride.



3. Great guitar players: Wayman appears to be the main guitar player here, and she knows what she's doing. There's a noticeable post-punk influence in the spare style, rhythmic attack and a tone setting that prefers clean vibrato and arpeggios to fuzz tone, gain and power chords. While Wayman and Kokal don't work into the kind of feverish interplay that makes a stylistically similar band like Interpol (just one example) so amazing, their guitar lines are pitch perfect and accomplished. They can play, but they never overdo it.

4. Vocals: Kokal and her supporting cast are not powerful singers, and at times -- as in  "Undertow" --  the band settles on the now-popular indie trend of soft, ethereal harmonies. While the harmonies lend the music a definite and unmistakable character, they sometimes get lost. Vocals are noticeably lost on the second track, "Warpaint." Which in some ways, I think is too bad. Kokal on her own can be a potent enough vocalist -- witness her performance on the lone acoustic number "Baby." Given a little more of a starring role, Kokal might lend Warpaint a bit more personality, often a good thing, but not always.  More often than not, though, Warpaint wins at juxtaposing music that is melancholy and muscular with slight, almost little-girl-like singing that just plain works. 


 I could gush on. Love will will do that to you. But finally -- and this is a simplistic but important point --Warpaint is way more than just a novel all-girl act. This is a band of musicians and song writers that can stand toe-to-toe with the boys in the all-boys club of indie rock. And The Fool is a terrific debut album from a band I really hope to hear much more from in years to come.