Here's the thing about music: Does it accumulate meaning the more you understand connections? Or do more associations pile on unnecessary baggage that isn't actually connected to the song at all? Typical Girls is the "solo" project of Ilirjana Alushaj of Apache Beat and The Pop Manifesto and other stuff. It's solo in the sense that she's writing and recording the songs, but other people are brought in. For "Our Real is Real," she's enlisted the help of CFCF, but its subtle—you can hear it in the warm synth build up into guitar dissonance, and the way the song sounds so round, like even the empty space is an essential part of the song. And actually, it kind of is. We can only assume that Alushaj took the name Typical Girls from The Slits song (connection or baggage?) of the same name. Weirdly, "Typical Girls" the song, is one of the more hyperactive in The Slits' catalog, the polar opposite of "Our Real is Real," which is pretty similar to getting smacked in the chest with a battering ram in excruciating five minute intervals. Less about jumping around and more about moping attractively, which we weren't entirely sure was possible until we heard this. "Our Real is Real" is out digitally in handy, portable, MP3 format tomorrow.
