Rich Girls

NYC-based art-rock band Rich Girls blurs the lines of music genre. Floating between the reverb of dark-garage and sugary doom-pop, their haunting new EP Love Is The Dealer is a beautiful intersection of sound that makes you want to dance around your bedroom one minute, cry the next.

Singer and guitarist Luisa Black unravels the classic pop love song with haunting vulnerability. As she worked on the album, Black tells BUST: "I've never been comfortable writing love songs but Love Is The Dealer was a turning point. I wrote without constraint or control which made the songs darker and much more raw. Even the pop songs came unhinged. And that became the filter--kicking against pretense. Originally the record was a full-length but I pared it back only to songs that felt really exposed.”

Earlier this month, Rich Girls debuted a new video for one of the album’s singles, "Loaded." Luisa Black self-directed and edited the energetic video, finding stylistic influences in pop dance choreography. “Everything from West Side Story to the Ducky scene in Pretty In Pink. I wanted a combination of minimal and spastic.”

The five-song EP may be small, but Rich Girls knows how to pack a sweet, sweet punch. As the days get colder, we’ll make sure to keep these dreamy melodies close. Love Is The Dealer EP is available for purchase on Bandcamp and make sure to stream these lovely tracks below. - BUST

You either have to be sarcastic, and afraid of nothing, or just plain clueless to call your band Rich Girls these days. Is this New York group a bunch of snobby, entitled Lana Del Rey wannabes – or are they punk, or hip-hop? As it turns out, none of the above. Frontwoman Luisa Black’s cool, inscrutable vocals and enigmatic, offhanded lyrical metaphors float over a reverb toned guitar backdrop that’s part new wave and part dreampop. Black’s latest project is a lot more dynamic than her old group, San Francisco dark garage band the Blacks. The new debut ep Love Is the Dealer is streaming at Bandcamp; the band has a show at Bowery Electric on March 7 at 9:30 PM. Cover is $8

The opening number, New Bag has a hypnotic, insistent, echoey downstroke guitar drive set to a 2/4 new wave pulse: Wire and New Order are the obvious comparisons.

Loaded is the album’s best cut, a steady, twinkling, reverby, noir-tinged number, 60s Orbison pop updated for the teens. Early Sharon Van Etten and Holly Miranda sounded a lot like this; the band follows a steady trajectory upward to an enveloping dreampop vortex.

Open Water is a more propulsive take on the post-New Order sound of the ep’s first song. It seems to be about taking a plunge, and the consequences afterward.

Grip has a catchy middle-period Jesus & Mary Chain growl and a far more dynamic singer than that band had. The ep’s final cut is Black Night, an allusive waltz. “White light, head in your hands, you’re alive again,” Black intones “Alive, alive, back from the dead…hold the feeling and not repeat until we run.” Like most of the other songs here, it builds toward a deep-space shimmer not unlike what the Church was doing 25 years ago. If the band does all this onstage, it could be something to get lost in. - New York Music Daily

There’s a comic from the website Owl Turd about our emotional states as we get older. It says that we start out life as a warm mushy pink blob. We are sensitive, fully in our feelings, and have no reservations. As we get older and we invariably get hurt by our parents/friends/romantic partners, we start to build up walls. Eventually we become these unflinching steel robots that will wait hours to text back to keep someone interested or avoiding saying how much we like a person in order to feel desperate. We appear as if we rarely get hurt, and become very good at making our way through the dangerous world. Underneath all the armor, piloting that robot is the same mushy pink blob.

Rich Girls is a duo that makes dreamy guitar rock about the trauma that causes us to become that robot in the first place. They spend most of their time on their new EP Love is the Dealer crafting mournful garage rock tunes that harken back to classic groups like the Cocteau Twins as well as newer bands like Best Coast. But unlike Best Coast, whose hazy sound often romanticizes love, Rich Girls captures the desolation found in the quest for romance. Like Jesus and the Mary Chain, Rich Girls makes distortion weighty with longing. “Open Water” would have been a great soundtrack for Lux waking up on the football field alone in The Virgin Suicides, and opener “New Bag” is about the kind of love (and drug abuse) that causes us to start hardening to protect our bruised selves. When lead singer and guitarist Luisa Black sighs “Love is the dealer, love is the drug” on the song “Loaded,” it’s not the playful comparison of the Kesha track. She underscores the dire consequences of romance by finishing “Love is the loaded gun.” Far from shying away from the danger, Black looks that gun full in the face and sings “shoot baby” because she knows that “love is the damage done.” It’s that kind of fearlessness that we all had as squishy blobs before the world forced us to contract our armored robots. The EP is only five songs, but there’s enough happening to make it feel momentous. It’s a pink blob that’s been dragged through the dirt, and listening can give you the kind of catharsis that heals in the way no set of robotic armor can provide. - The Le Sigh

If you’re hankering for groovin’ indie rock with a heavy dose of ’80s goth, then put your money down on Rich Girls. Rich Girls is the solo project of Luisa Black. When offers came to play live, she quickly put a band together that included her favorite San Franciscan musicians. The San Francisco band’s latest EP, “Fiver,” came out last month.

Was there a band you heard when you were young that inspired you to become a musician?

LB: I grew up listening to British punk and West Coast radio pop, and I was obsessed with both. And then at some point I was teaching myself to play guitar and a boy told me the Pixies chord progressions were too hard for me to learn. Worst boyfriend ever, but he had the virtue of provoking my rebellion.

How did you come up with your band name and what does it mean to you?

LB: Rich Girls was originally just me sitting alone in a London flat with GarageBand. I wanted a name that didn’t sound like the lonely solo project it was. But there’s also a tradition of aristocrats in rock ’n’ roll — Bryan Ferry, Robert Palmer — and I had an idea about bringing that art polish to the grime world of garage rock. I wanted to create a new West Coast sound out of that sonic history. California noir. But we may be a tribe of one.

Which of your lyrics best defines your band and why?

LB: There’s a line in “Soft Disease” from the “Fiver” EP: “I’m overdue lately/ Already news, already news.” I wrote it the day after Philip Seymour Hoffman died. I think a lot about compulsion and the pull of self-destruction. Rich Girls is very much about walking the line. - San Francisco Chronicle

Visa delays blow. There’s no getting around it. But sometimes a visa mishap for one English band (Coves) means a serendipitous night for a local up-and-comer. This past Monday Rich Girls, fronted by Luisa Black, formerly of The Blacks, seized the opportunity to open for The Raveonettes at the super-swank Bimbo’s 365 Club in North Beach. Black was accompanied by August Churchill on guitar and Chris Sipe on drums, both dressed (as per usual) in suits. After a successful single release show at Brick & Mortar for “Worse” off their Fiver EP out October 7 (Breakup Records,) Rich Girls exuded the poise and confidence necessary for precluding the heart-wrenching wall-of-sound act that is The Raveonettes. Black was decadently distant from the audience, remaining an enigma with rare moments of banter and pause for the spaces between songs. Her voice is a gritty, timeless call-back to The Cure’s early stuff, dreamily combining with the never-excessive amount of reverb. With too much attitude and know-how to be considered delicate dream-pop, this is a band that you want playing while you smoke your first cigarette. (Don’t smoke, kids.) Playing songs from Fiver and their 2013 EP The One I Want (Tricycle Records), Rich Girls uncovered new songs to be on the look-out for, including “California Girl” and “Get You High.” Wanna know where you can hear those jangles live? They’ll be playing an EP release show at Rickshaw Stop on October 8 with The Whigs and Greylag. - The Bay Bridged

Rich Girls played an all too brief set to open the festivities. This band played a set of Jesus & Mary Chain inspired rock that filled the room with an epic amount of feedback and distortion, only to be grounded by the stunning vocals of Luisa Black. She has the soulful twang of Neko Case, and her voice was treated with the perfect amount of reverb- just enough that parts of her voice blended in with the thunder that was backing her, while still staying present in the foreground. This, of course, being my prime complaint about shoegaze bands is that the vocals are always mixed in the back. Rich Girls found the happy place where the singer is both drowning in and dominating over the distortion. - Spinning Platters

Rich Girls dig reverb and cocktails (as they proudly declare on Facebook), but as a band that has previously identified themselves as “drug-fi“ this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. What originally started out as Luisa Black’s demos following the breakup of her garage rock trio the Blacks has developed into a fully realized live band and an upcoming debut EP, entitled Fiver. Their vibe is dark and poppy, and while they get a little spacey with the atmospherics, it’s safe to say that no one is in danger of gazing at their shoes — not when there’s so much dancing to be done.

We wanted to get to know more about the woman behind the band, so we reached out to see what are some things that help Black get in the right headspace to craft these moody, little gems. From style to Phillip Seymour Hoffman, check out what Rich Girls turn to for inspiration. - Alt Citizen

Rich Girls, the solo project of former garage rock stalwarts The Black’s Luisa Black, are a logical progression from the 60s fueled swagger of John Dwyer and his lot, carrying over the thrashy guitars and sneering attitude but adding a bouncy layer of 90s powered bass that pushes the sound into a rollicking amalgam of grunge and goth. The band dips a toe into the tepid waters of Beach House, but Luisa Blacks voice, crystal clear with just a hint of broken-toothed attitude lingering on the edges, flips the tone, turning Victoria Legrands mope-heavy indie-jams into rollicking rock and fucking roll. Look for the Fiver EP on October 10. - Side One Track One

The music you make before you earn any substantial money from it is probably the most interesting. Trying to transfer that sound rattling around your cranial cavity to the instruments at your mercy is thrilling, daunting and if you’re lucky, rewarding. Not just for the creators but to the eager-eared witnesses.

San Francisco’s Rich Girls (Luisa Black, Chris Sipe, August Churchill) have a new EP Fiver (Breakup Records) that finds this rock n’ roll band shadowing the post-punk garage textures of late 70’s Iggy Pop, Cure and respectful echoes of Mazzy Star and Jesus & The Mary Chain.

Captivating, at times dark, the familiar and elegantly raw drive of vocalists/guitarist Black is wrapped in the sinuous sounds of Sipe and Churchill. Rich Girls simply rock the joint. In this case Fiver.

Music from the soul is art and making the palette multidirectional and spatially open for interpretation gives a band leg room. I expect Rich Girls will continue to explode with surprise in sounds as the greats of various shades of garage rock have done before them.

I caught up with Rich Girls’ Luisa Black for a chat about this and that.



GTC: Is Rich Girls still a ‘solo project’ or is this your band now you’re home?

LB: Rich Girls is a full band now. I’m still the songwriter but now I have a ripping guitar player and drummer. Much better than sitting around alone with GarageBand all day. Even for a solo flyer.

GTC: You seem to enjoy the things being written about the new EP Fiver, anything strike you as odd? Do you think people are getting what you’re doing?

LB: I love music journalism. Seriously. I think it’s a highly underrated skill and unfairly maligned. For something like Rich Girls which is as much an art project as it is a band, it’s great when writers get it right. Global Texan got it right by the way.

GTC: It seems from my vantage point San Fran is exploding into the music scene to be in, again.

LB: Doubt it. Everyone’s too busy worrying about rent.

GTC: How much of a community is the scene there…is it all for one or don’t get in my way?

LB: There’s a small but committed indie rock community and everyone’s kind. Personally I’d like to see more troublemaking in rock and roll. A little band rivalry keeps everyone sharp.

GTC: Touring is expensive and a gamble, what are the plans for Rich Girls?

LB: We’re doing regional touring and we need to sell a million t-shirts or die. I usually write MERCH in giant letters on my arm before a show to remind myself.

GTC: Why switch labels for this release?

LB: The money. Just kidding. We have great coverage in San Francisco with Tricycle so we’re extending our reach with Breakup Records out of Portland.

GTC: What are five things the world should know about Rich Girls.

LB:
We’re not rich.
Almost none of us are girls.
Guitar, drums, no bass.
I write all the scripts for our videos and I need someone to put me in touch with Richard Hell who I want to cast in the sequel to Worse.
Talk to us: richgirlstheband@gmail.com - Global Texan Chronicles