The ensuing competition to tie Horsegirl’s sound to ever more arcane rock groups of yesteryear—from My Bloody Valentine and Gang of Four to The Cleaners From Venus and Tall Dwarfs—may have gotten slightly out of hand. “It felt a little bit reductive of our own voices,” Reece observes.
But it also lit a fire in them, to make something no one else could lay claim to. “I feel like we found something on this record,” Lowenstein says, “where we started to just be like, ‘Oh, this sounds like…I don’t know what this sounds like. This sounds like Horsegirl.’”
Cheng and Lowenstein, who trade off on vocals, guitars, and bass, share an apartment not far from Birdy’s, and Reece lives in the neighborhood too. It’s a long way, geographically and psychically, from the Chicago rock scene where Horsegirl made a name for itself playing all-ages shows alongside bands like Lifeguard (Lowenstein’s brother is a member), Friko, Dwaal Troupe, and Post Office Winter.
“We live closer to each other than we ever did,” says Reece. “We’ve found new aspects of our friendship for sure.” Reece, befitting a drummer, is the cutup of the group; Lowenstein has a knack for putting complicated thoughts and emotions into words; Cheng is the quietest, with serious presence and power.
Reece publishes a zine called My Boyfriend and makes some extra money babysitting. Cheng and Lowenstein are finishing up their studies at NYU. I can’t resist asking if they’ve crossed paths with the school’s most famous, or infamous, current student, Barron Trump.
“Oh my God, no,” says Lowenstein. “My extended family cannot believe he goes to NYU. ‘He’s seven feet tall! How can you miss him?!’
“Most of the time, it feels like no one in my class knows I’m in a band. No one cares,” she continues. “The only time it got a little weird was in my first year of school. We had just released a record and I was missing a lot of school to do Coachella and stuff like that.”
It was quite a ride for three kids who still couldn’t legally order a drink. They toured the US and UK, opened for Wilco, Pavement, and Yo La Tengo, and got stranded at the Glastonbury music festival in rural England. “We didn’t realize how in-the-middle-of-nowhere it was until we passed Stonehenge,” Reece recalls. “We were like, ‘Yooo, Stonehenge!’ Then we’re like, ‘This shit is further out than Stonehenge?”
Happily, they say, they have had no nightmare encounters with other artists. “People have always been really sweet,” says Reece. “We met the Breeders at Coachella and that was such a sweet, sweet moment.”
“I remember you being like, ‘We’re huge fans,’ and Kim Deal was like, ‘I’m a huge fan.’ And then she got our number and made a group chat,” says Lowenstein.
Performing onstage has always been at the center of the Horsegirl phenomenon, but their live sound leveled up considerably over two years of touring. They started thinking about how their second album could build on, and also depart from, everything that had come before.
When I first heard Phonetics On and On, I felt joy tinged with competitive irritation: How can they be this good? Yes, I heard things that reminded me of some of my favorite old bands: Stereolab’s contralto harmonies, Sebadoh’s trebly guitar and huge bass, The Modern Lovers’ hypnotic two-chord stomp. But it was all fresh, alive, and reimagined with exquisite taste. And it ranged much more widely than the first album, from the metallic drone of “Switch Over” to the restrained jangle of “Frontrunner.”
I texted Matador founder Chris Lombardi to express my admiration, and he wrote back: “Right?? They’ve grown so much! I love the intention of the sound and the SPACE! It’s like space is the 4th member.”
That newly spacious sound is the product of several decisions that were indeed intentional. “One thing we knew immediately is we didn’t want the guitar to be distorted at all,” says Lowenstein.
“We got into this vision of a kids’ recital,” adds Cheng, “where you plug directly into the amp and play with a straight clean sound. There’s a playfulness on this record that’s related to that idea.”