Safe As Houses

The cooler kids and I attended a special show last night, a small spectacle performed beneath ceiling fans and behind tiny instruments, a fine line dissecting evenly disturbing and disarming. It was - they were - the Parenthetical Girls (two parenthetical, two authentic), and what they conjured feels now like a dream: fleeting and majestically disheartening, and a little frightening. Honestly, the details of the show which I can recall are much more spacial and surreal than the usual setlist/setup. I couldn't even see Zac Pennington most of the time, his figure intercepted by a large speaker, but in my mind he's there on the floor with a drumstick, he's standing right next to me and leaning on the door jamb, he's saying goodnight. But what happened, what I heard, was astonishing. The songs from Safe As Houses were gorgeous, his falsetto was perfectly cracked and the music was feminine and special in a way I can't really describe. It was comforting and contrasting with the lyrics of girls on train tracks and bitter mothers, it was sad done eerily well.

I bought Safe As Houses after the show, and as strangely blurred as my short-term memory may be, listening now I can clearly recall hearing the songs played. Most of all "I Was A Dancer," and the simply scary resentment in everything: the words ("You took nine months to destroy my body"), the voice near hysterics, the music's terrible hiss. In this song I hear coarsing fluids, I hear instinct and unnerving passion.

Parenthetical Girls - I Was A Dancer [mp3]

Parenthetical Girls - Love Connection, Pt II [mp3]

Visit the Parenthetical Girls online, and buy the fantastic new album Safe As Houses here.