#deroarcade

California Girls - Small Birds Beat Boy (Dero Arcade, 2020)

This is club music. While the vocals are central, they’re not essential, and California Girls’ Beat Boy could easily be an instrumental album. That’s not to diminish the vocals and the lyrics, they’re what make this album unique and are what keep you there, flinching and wanting to listen more closely at once. It’s more that the production and songwriting is so accomplished that the tracks could easily stand alone as a dance release. 

The lyrics are introspective and personal, though I’m not sure if they’re from the perspective of Gus or from an avatar of himself. Either way, they feel honest. They’re often about sex and always about life or about living. The songs on Beat Boy are catchy, in spite of the monotonous vocal lines, and I’m kept on my toes with the music references - there’s glimpses of 2000s-era pop (Give Me Everything), early 80s new wave (Disorder), industrial (Pairing), and 90s rave (Small Birds), for starters.

California Girls, the project of Gus McGrath, started in Canberra in 2014 and is now based in Sydney.