Women – Women

This self-titled album from the band Women will certainly be contending for the title of best indie-rock album to come out this year. It covers quite a bit of musical ground, so calling it indie rock itself is something of a cop-out. That said, it’s an impressive debut.

Where to start with this one? We have ambient instrumentals (the creepy “Woodbine”); gently affecting cum dark pop (“Upstairs”); pounding martial noise (“January 8th”). And that’s just the beginning. Every track feels like a surprise in the context of the album because little that comes before or after prepares you for what’s happening right then.

When you hear the lovely, guitar-driven instrumental “Sag Harbor Bridge,” with its deft fretwork, you can’t reconcile it with the Grifters-like closer “Flashlights.” “Flashlights” has that same loose, shambolic feel of The Grifters’ first album So Happy Together, where you experience an unhinged band exploring its instruments as though they’re just discovering how far they can be pushed into semi-structured noise. Jumping from there to “Lawncare,” you start to sense that this is a band that actually has complete control of its songwriting and that everything it does is intentional, even at its noisiest. “Lawncare” takes a pop structure and melody, layers it with melancholy, puts it through a Cabaret Voltaire noise machine, and arrives at something quite unlike what you were ready for when the song started.

The most immediately clean and direct tracks would probably be “Group Transport Hall” and “Black Rice.” Both mix early Shins with something vaguely 60s, like the Kinks around the time of Village Green. That first Shins album had a magic about it that Women captures effortlessly when it hits on these two tracks. “Upstairs,” likewise, takes this approach, before devolving into some sort of cough-syrup fever dream.

For my money, it all comes together on the amazing “Shaking Hand.” It’s peaceful, frenetic, relaxed, odd, familiar, and just stunning. There are 10,000 bands that would all sell their souls to have written just one of the passages that this song goes through. It’s like a short story unto itself.

The pop fans might be put off by the noisy, experimental parts of the album, while those who favor the avant-garde might be flummoxed by the sincerity of the more standard tracks. Taken as a whole, though, this record’s Bee Thousand approach to just putting all of its ideas out there and taking its listeners on a joyride through the minds of its creators will strike a chord with music fans who are tired of the same old same old. It’s remarkable for its breadth as much as its depth.