In the Beginning
| In the Beginning | |
|---|---|
 | |
| [[File:|center|frameless]] | |
| EP by Girl Friday | |
| Released | 1997 |
| Recorded | |
| Studio | Ice Bone Studio
Redondo Beach, CA |
| Label | |
 /
| |
Track list
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Black & White Love" | 3:35 |
| 2. | "Only You" | 2:48 |
| 3. | "Sad Clown" | 1:55 |
| 4. | "Pretty Gem Stone" | 2:56 |
| 5. | "All I Wanted" | 1:58 |
| 6. | "Girl Friday" | 3:38 |
Background
According to Discogs user mpavilion, a group member stated in 2017 that "maybe a few thousand copies" were pressed[1]
Personnel
- Tom Watson - guitar, writer
- Mayo Thompson - piano, harmonica, writer
- Alexis Hall - vocals, writer
- Andrew Parsegian - bass
- Bill Bowman - bass
- Gary Ferguson - drums
- Dewey - congas
Cover art
Graphic design by Mark Stritzel
Reviews
New Times L.A.
Keven McAlester
April 23, 1998[2]
Between the two of them, Mayo Thompson and Tom Watson have spent a good 50 years inverting the cliches of pop music and twisting them into art-damaged demi-rock--the former as founder and figurehead of the long-running and very tweaked Red Krayola, the latter as guitarist and sometime singer in such (slightly more rockist and traditional) bands as Slovenly and Overpass (and also as a member of the Krayola's '90s incarnation). Given their extensive and extensively subversive discographies, the idea of either guy embracing pop's traditions would seem slightly less likely than, say, a blizzard in downtown Manhattan Beach.
So here's your snow shovel. Girl Friday--a year-old songwriting collaboration between Thompson, Watson, and vocalist Alexis Hall (late of Hello, I'm a Truck)--is a full-on pop record, generally conventional and irony-free, a set of six short, simple songs--perhaps the most novel of concepts for these three. And they pull it off wonderfully; it's a winsome EP full of goofy wit and catchy tunes that revel in their own lack of complexity. Hall, in particular, executes her role with something approaching perfection. Her lyrics employ a kind of reductivist, tongue-in-cheek sexuality, the clear model of which is the '60s girl-group--"Black and White Love" turns getting pulled over by a cop into an extended come-on metaphor ("You have the right/To hold me tight," etc.); on "Girl Friday," she delivers an archetypal ballad of devotion with nary a wink: "I'm forever your girl Friday/And Monday/And Tuesday/And Wednesday," and so on. Her voice tends toward the requisite breathy coo, but Hall's occasional flashes of attitude (most notably on the verses of "Black and White") keep things honest; like the best new wave singers, she uses them to achieve the necessary distance from formula.
The new wave comparison actually works for the whole band, considering the music's similar delight in simplicity. A few moments might start to betray Thompson/Watson's art-rock background, but you'd scarcely notice 'em if you weren't looking ("Pretty Gem Stone" is the most obvious offender). Not that such tendencies are incompatible with pop; it's just not the point here. The music does what it's supposed to: it gets you humming and stays out of the way. "Only You" and "All I Wanted" bounce and jangle, "Sad Clown" and "Girl Friday" sway and croon, but it's all traditional, all well-written, all good.