Bands and artists will come and go. In this crowd of what's interesting right now, we're left to pick and choose what's worth our time and what's just the "next sound." It's not often you'll find a solo artist that can take the best of two totally different sounds and make them both click. But Portland, Oregon's Jerry Joiner, fronting his one man band Girlfriends, does just that, giving us the perfect combination of chilled, accessible math rock mixed with a scattered doses of spazzed-out electronic post-hardcore. Think slight hints of Q and Not U meeting a more chaotic brand of Maps & Atlases, Robot Science keys parts, and a little So Many Dynamos. Take "Bernie Mac Attack," with its perfectly scripted mathy madness and bevy and gang vocals, or cool off with the trance-inducing repeating bars of "Untitled #3." Girlfriends is what we get when a talented college student gives us his take on the "interesting right now."
