Little Girls

Although the production has been cleaned up significantly on the latest batch of tunes from Toronto, ON's Little Girls, it's clear that while Josh McIntyre has things to say, he's not about to let his fans know what they might be. McIntyre has spent the last couple years touring with a four-piece band, thrashing through the tracks off Little Girls' debut LP, Concepts. But Cults reveals a band far more disciplined than their live shows might have you believe. The drums are crisp and bass lines slinky, with McIntyre's muffled vocals floating overtop. The Joy Division comparisons will only intensify now that the individual instruments are more audible, but such comparisons miss the point: the songs on Cults are as much about gloomy atmosphere as they are minimalist guitar lines. It shows that Little Girls owe as much of a debt to Bauhaus and early Cure records as they do any Mancunian group and that McIntyre intends to use the name for whatever chameleon-like shift he sees fit.