On May 24th, Australian group Girl and Girl will release their debut full-length, ‘Call A Doctor’, on CD/LP/DSP via Sub Pop and Virgin Australia (in Australia). The album is the full-length follow-up to Girl and Girl’s 2023 digital release ‘Divorce +’, an eight-track EP that featured the standout singles All I See and Dance Now.
‘Call A Doctor’ is an unforgettable first bow from Girl and Girl, an audacious and aggressively tuneful blast of a record from this Australian four-piece garage rock outfit. The band is comprised of frontperson Kai James (singer, guitarist) and his Aunty Liss (drums), along with longtime friends Jayden Williams (guitar) and Fraser Bell (bass). ‘Call A Doctor’ was recorded at Sundowner Sound in Melbourne, a two-story industrial complex where the band ate, slept, and made music in marathon sessions for two weeks straight with producer Burke Reid (Courtney Barnett, Julia Jacklin).
To celebrate the launch of their new forthcoming long player, the band is sharing an official video for their lead single, Hello, from director Tayla Lauren.
The band’s front person, Kai James, shares this about the single:
“‘Hello’ is the story of a young man who requires daily consults with health professionals in order to rationalise his self-destructive thoughts and routines. It’s about romanticising your own misery. Letting those deep, dark, dirty thoughts take over. Understanding that even if you could pull yourself out, you wouldn’t because the constant stress and worry are all too familiar and comfortable.”
Girl and Girl have also announced North American & Australian tour dates, with additional appearances at Eurokennees in France and End of the Road in the UK. The band will appear at SXSW in March before heading home for the ‘Hello Australia Tour’ in April. In late April, the band heads back to the States for a North American tour supporting fellow Aussies Royel Otis. See further below for a full list of shows.
‘Call A Doctor’ is available to preorder now on CD/LP/DSPs from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com, select independent retailers (US), select independent retail stores (EU/UK) & Mega Mart 2 (the new, UK-based sibling site to the world-famous Sub Pop Mega Mart) will receive the Loser Edition on White vinyl. All coloured vinyl versions are available while stock lasts.
In one sense, it’s easy for artists—songwriters, specifically—to express their feelings in their work. After all, that’s what the lyrics are for! But it’s much harder to convey emotional energy in how you play, slash at the guitar, and the structure of the music itself. That’s precisely why Girl and Girl’s Sub Pop debut, ‘Call A Doctor’, feels like such a vital, electrifying shock to the senses. Not since the early work of Car Seat Headrest or Conor Oberst’s widescreen emotional brutality as Bright Eyes has indie rock managed to come across as this intimate and grandiose, as the Australian quartet led by Kai James lay a lifetime’s worth of woes—mental health, the human race’s planned obsolescence if you’ve been living on this cursed rock you know what we’re getting at—across a canvas of indie rock that feels both timeless and in-the-moment.
An audacious and aggressively tuneful blast of a record, ‘Call A Doctor’ is an unforgettable first bow from Girl and Girl, whose origins lie in James and guitarist Jayden Williams jamming in his mother’s garage in the afternoon after school. One afternoon, James’ Aunty Liss headed down to their practice space after walking her dog and asked if she could sit in on drums. “It sounded really great,” James recalls. “We begged her to stay, and she said, ‘I’ll stay until you find another drummer.’ We wore her down, and she eventually became a permanent member.”
After bassist Fraser Bell joined to round things out, Girl and Girl hit the road and began to make a name for themselves beyond the Australian bush, eventually signing to Sub Pop off the strength of word of mouth. ‘Call A Doctor’ came together quickly soon after, largely recorded in marathon sessions in a two-story industrial complex over the course of two weeks. “That added to the intensity of the album,” James says about the frenzied creative process overseen by producer Burke Reid. “I can hear the stress in the record, which is good because that’s what it’s about—being tense, tied up, and in your own head.”
‘Call A Doctor’’s eleven songs—spanning sweeping guitar epics and wry acoustic shuffles to spiky punk maneuvers and the type of raw, adoringly unvarnished indie-pop associated with legendary PacNW label K Records—are literally plucked from James’ personal history, as he reworked older recordings with newer lyrics reflecting his past struggles as well as new anxieties that emerged prior to the album’s recording. “I’ve struggled with mental health for a lot of my life,” he explains, “and I went through a particularly difficult patch when we were making the album; the band had started to get some attention, and I felt an enormous amount of pressure to live up to it.”
Far from the sound of collapsing under pressure, ‘Call A Doctor’ finds James and Co. stepping up with their entire collective chest. This is a record that’s so out-and-out alive that you nearly feel like you’re in the same room with Girl and Girl as you listen to it; lead single Hello practically bursts through the speakers, amplified by Aunty Liss’ unbelievable stickhandling duties.
Mother pogos on a spiky groove that’s reminiscent of the geographically close New Zealanders who make up the legendary Flying Nun label, while Oh Boy draws from the Shins’ own jangly sound, injected with James’ wonderfully nervy vocals. Then there’s ‘Call a Doctor’’s sorta-centrepiece Maple Jean and the Anthropocene, a five-minute epic offering a new perspective on climate change and the notion of what it means, in a personal sense, to suffer: “I live in the bushland, and I was driving home one night and hit and killed a wallaby with my car,” James recalls while discussing the song’s lyrical inspiration. “My first thought was, ‘What is the universe trying to tell me?’ No remorse, no guilt, just total self-centeredness. Which was like, Woah, you fucking psychopath! This wallaby wasn’t put on this earth to send you a message. That’s what the song is about, our egocentric species – thinking you’re the main character and that everything that happens is somehow about you.”
“This record is about an individual who’s too far in their head, trying to get out,” James continues while discussing ‘Call A Doctor’’s overall outlook—specifically the snapshot it offers of its creator. But even though this record deals with uneasy topics we all know well from within ourselves, it’s important to emphasise how teeming with life Girl and Girl’s music is. There’s a brazen, bold sense of humour to this stuff, an undeniable brightness to the darkness that makes it impossible not to be drawn in as a listener. Feeling down never sounded so goddamn good.
Tour dates:
Mar 12-16th | Austin, TX – SXSW
Apr 4th | Gold Coast, QLD – Mo’s Desert Clubhouse
Apr 5th | Sunshine Coast, QLD – Sol Bar
Apr 6th | Brisbane, QLD – Black Bear Lodge
Apr 12th | Melbourne, VIC – The Tote
Apr 13th | Sydney, NSW – Lansdowne
Apr 14th | Wollongong, NSW – La La Las
Apr 23rd | St. Paul, MN – Amsterdam Bar & Hall *
Apr 24th | Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall *
Apr 26th | Toronto, ON – Longboat Hall *
Apr 27th | Columbus, OH – A&R Music Bar *
Apr 28th | Cleveland Heights, OH – Grog Shop *
Apr 30th | New York, NY – Racket *
May 1st | New York, NY – Racket *
May 2nd | Philadelphia, PA – Theater for the Living Arts *
May 3rd | Washington, DC – The Howard *
May 4th | Carrboro, NC – Cats Cradle *
May 8th | Austin, TX – The Parish *
May 9th | Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves *
May 11th | Denver, CO – The Perplexiplex at Meow Wolf *
May 15th | Phoenix, AZ – Rebel Lounge *
May 16th | Hollywood, CA – The Fonda Theater *
May 17th | Santa Barbara, CA – Soho Restaurant & Music Club *
May 18th | San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop *
May 20th | Portland, OR – The Aladdin Theater *
May 21st | Vancouver, BC – Fox Cabaret *
May 22nd | Seattle, WA – Neptune Theater *
Jul 6th | Cravanche, FR – Les Eurokennees
Aug 29th – Sep 1st | Dorset, UK – End Of The Road
* w/ Royel Otis
Photo credit: James Caswell
Thanks to Brace Yourself PR
