A Cult Above The Rest

Slouching through the clubby backstage lounge at Whelan’s, Girls’ Christopher Owens has something he needs to get off his chest. “Man, The Cranberries were the most awesome band ever,” he announces. “They completely captured the atmosphere of their time. They were right in the dividing line between grunge and shoe-gaze.”

Whilst Hot Press picks itself off the floor, he elaborates. “I was the biggest fan growing up,” says the singer, pausing to adjust the faded trucker cap tilted just-so on his head. “For me they were definitely the best Irish band.”
Girls’ back-story is the stuff of a TV3 true life movie. Raised in the sweaty bosom of the infamous Children of God Cult – notorious for encouraging female members to prostitute themselves, the better to spread the Lord’s word – Owens spent his childhood schlepping around Europe and Japan with his proselytizing mother, arriving in America for the first time aged 16.
“It was a weird experience for sure,” says the 25-year-old in his distinctive perma-stoner slur. “I didn’t get to hear a whole lot of rock or pop music when I was a child ‘cos we travelled around a whole lot. Looking back, my childhood was pretty unusual.”
Too unusual, in fact. That, at least, was the conclusion reached by elements in the US media which instigated a JT LeRoy style witch-hunt to unmask Owens as either a fantasist or a fake. As it turns out, his remarkable biog proved 100 per cent kosher: he really did grow up in a cult before escaping as a teenager to take up with a Texas millionaire, for whom he worked as a live-in gofer before relocating once again, to San Francisco and starting Girls.
“The Village Voice did a piece on it,” he groans. “I think they set out to write a certain kind of story. It’s hurtful when someone casts doubt over your actual life. I hope the person who wrote that got fired.”
As is made clear by the dreamy, druggy sound of their debut album (entitled, er, Album), Girls are no strangers to the philosophy of better living through chemistry. In fact, Owens and band-mate Chet White wrote and recorded most of the LP peering through a fug of over-the- counter pharmaceuticals, though they insist this doesn’t mark them out as degenerates.
“America's such a medicated society,” says White (incidentally ,the first US musician I have met not under the impression Ireland is part of the UK). “From the time you’re in school, you’re prescribed meds for everything. I don’t see us as being particularly out of step in using them as a creative aid.”
Not everyone agrees. When the duo discussed their drug use with a British newspaper last year, Chet’s family were, to put it mildly, quite alarmed to discover he was using leisure-time pharmaceuticals as a song-writing tool.
“That caused me a lot of trouble,” he sighs. “I had to have a long conversation with my folks. They were alarmed at how I was portrayed in the piece. It was a good interview. But the result was that I had to have a frank talk about drugs with my parents.”
With his throaty, some might say whiny, singing style, Owens has been tagged an Elvis Costello soundalike. He sighs when this is brought up.
“Man, I never ever heard an Elvis Costello song until people started saying this about me. Actually, I did know one of his songs – the one that’s on the radio all the time. So anyway, I went and watched a video of his and I couldn’t see the similarity. Listen to his verses. He crams like a hundred words in there. Whereas my songs, they’re one or two thoughts.” He smiles. “That’s all that’s in there. One or two thoughts.”
Since becoming a quasi-public figure, Owens has been reached out to by many other Children of God survivors, seeking a connection with someone who, like them, has crawled through the shit and brimstone and made it out alive.
“Yeah, it’s getting kind of weird. Lots of people have been getting in contact. And people from my own life too. We were playing a show in Southampton, England and there was a guy in the audience who had been in the cult the same time as me. It’s funny. I thought I had left that life behind me. I guess there are things that always stay with you.”