Hard-driving post-punk soundscapes try on many different wigs on Austin fourpiece Female Gallery’s Best Friends Together Forever. The band shape-shifts through the five songs on the EP – the first lines rarely cluing you in on where you’ll end up through bridges, refrains, and winding guitar solos. The result shows a lot of range for the young band, a kaleidoscopic view of guitar-driven rock influences.
Best Friends Together Forever is Female Gallery’s first offering after dropping two singles in 2022. The “indie band of femmes and thems,” as they describe themselves, keeps up with a color theme with the album cover: A bright Barbie-pink square is set behind a pair of held hands, showing a clear predilection for pink that echoes across publicity photos and social media.
Despite the twee cover, the EP tilts brooding and expansive. Each of the songs clocks over four minutes, shooting for the spaciousness to let lines bleed and fuzz together, the kind of scuzzy world-building that post-punk is made for. That length gives space to not only be an eclectic collection, but eclectic within the course of the song.
“How Does It Feel” begins the EP with a moody, slightly dissonant palette, with lead singer Bee Vasquez creating her own distinct melody that feels at times like it has a separate life from the music beneath her. It’s bold: It swiftly jumps into a repeated chorus with little introduction or settling, as if it had been here building all along and it was you who just arrived. And then, suddenly, the clouds fall away, the tempo builds and the song has melted into a danceable New Wave beat.
There are some verses that build up to an obvious conclusion with the chorus. Female Gallery prefers power clashing, offering verses and choruses that maybe you wouldn’t have paired together immediately. But just like any thoughtful designer, the band knows the material enough to make it work. Single “Simon Says” comes out of the gate with driving, persistent guitar, a punk groove that you could settle into, that is then interrupted when the power chords are replaced with lingering, punctuated guitar rips. By the end of the song, ”Simon Says” has morphed to a marching beat driven by drummer Genesis Vasquez, Bee’s partner.
The stability and access of the beginning of songs give the band room for later surprises. “Lessons” begins with a bob-along prominent bassline laid down by Adryan McGuire as layers are added one by one: simple guitar chords, a nice vocal harmony, a simple keyboard line adding dimension. Suddenly, an explosion. The guitar goes dark, drums thundering behind it, and Vasquez launches into a frenzied, repeated chorus line that bobs and weaves with backing vocals. It’s a chaos chorus that then disappears with the return of that direct, rooting keyboard line. “Numb” similarly relies on a more subdued background to let the most ambitious parts – in this case a climbing, climactic guitar solo from Jessica Bryn.
Female Gallery’s maximalist tendencies give Best Friends Together Forever a lot of dimension, the kind of texture and range you typically expect from a full-length. There’s lots to explore in the five songs, and there’s a sense, too, that the band is still figuring out exactly where it wants to settle. The possibilities presented across these five songs are myriad.
Female Gallery
Best Friends Together Forever
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This article appears in November 15 • 2024.