Giant Drag are a boy-girl duo from Los Angeles whose forte is shimmering, languid indie-pop.
For anyone still mourning the passing of shoegazing (it’s been 15 years – time for closure, dude) or secretly believes The Breeders could have been twice the band The Pixies ever were, their debut album strikes a thrillingly retro note.
Hearts And Unicorns opens as it means to continue, with a dreamy blast of feedback and blizzard drifts of melody. There are cooed vocals and weird dissonant surges – think ‘90s college rock pin-up Tanya Donnelley warbling over a My Bloody Valentine fade-out.
Giant Drag’s ace is vocalist and guitarist Annie Hard; her winsome falsetto manages to evoke, in the same beat, innocence and knowingness. Crucially, she knows when to let the music take over, eschewing the vamped-up theatrics distressingly current among ‘feisty’ rock front-women (Karen O - go away).
Like a sort of White Stripes in reverse, drummer and keyboard player Micah Calabrese spends most of the record trying not to trip up on Hard’s coat-tails. Calabrese conjures washes of background electronica, underscoring the duo’s spiritual connection to such neo shoegazers as Ulrich Schnauss and Manual. Largely, however, his job, it seems, is to stay out of Hard’s way.
In the US, Giant Drag have been tagged as ‘nu-grunge’, as though in hock to the legacy of Nirvana. Closer to the mark was the wit who dubbed them a ‘Mazzy Star for perverts’. As sweet as honey, as caustic as rattlesnake venom.