Los Angeles-based duo Girlpool’s first two albums were defined by their softly intertwining voices, which, given the rudimentary, low-key instrumentation, very much took centre stage. Since 2017’s Powerplant, however, Cleo Tucker has transitioned from female to male, and now sings in a deeper register than bandmate Harmony Tividad. As a consequence those songs where Tucker takes the lead come across like the work of a completely different band – there are distinct echoes of Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch in their new-found voice on Hire, for example.
Musically, meanwhile, What Chaos Is Imaginary continues the gradual hardening of their sound. Whereas their earliest recordings were minimally sketched, most of these songs are more fleshed out, none more so than the title track, which gradually builds to a strings-backed climax; there’s even the occasional unflashy guitar solo. While there are several moments to savour (particularly Pretty and the shoegaze-influenced Minute in Your Mind), the more muscular approach ultimately does them few favours: one is left with the sense that they have traded in what made them different for a stab at fairly unadventurous alt-rock by numbers.
