GIRLING

Prickly pop-rockers, Girling, brings a raw feel to their music, taking feelings of angst and frustration, and transforming them into a mix of melodic ballads and piercing rock tones. Based in Austin, Girling delivers a collection of sounds that come together in the most delightful way, harmony backed vocals, electrifying guitar riffs that all balance with terrific keyboard playing. The band exudes familiar notes of Spoon, Bright Eyes and a bit of Violent Femmes, taking those influences and injecting their own flavor into the music creating a musical experience you’ll want to hear on repeat. - KUTX

REVIEWED BY GREG BEETS, FRI., FEB. 1, 2013

Girling
Songs About Friends (Good and Bad)
Fronted by producer/composer Andy Sharp, Girling emerged in the early Aughts as a side project to local nebbish pop kingpins Kissinger. More than a decade later, Songs About Friends resonates with the spirit of that era, the key difference being Sharp's sonic acumen. Arrangements that transcend the pop-punk pedigree give uncommon heft to a bumper crop of scrappy sentiments. "Shitstorm" festoons its crunched-up hooks with artful bursts of strings that add cinematic weight to clever wordplay about crazy young love doomed to go south. "I promise not to break your heart," Sharp deadpans. "I'm much more into legs and arms." The horn-driven "I Hate Chicago" turns relationship woes into a brightly lit, dark-humored broadside against the Windy City itself. Embarrassing? Perhaps. Like Nick Hornby's most memorable characters, Girling's bewildered man/boy protagonist is eminently relatable, even at his most cringeworthy.

- Austin Chronicle

REVIEWED BY GREG BEETS, FRI., FEB. 1, 2013

Girling
Songs About Friends (Good and Bad)
Fronted by producer/composer Andy Sharp, Girling emerged in the early Aughts as a side project to local nebbish pop kingpins Kissinger. More than a decade later, Songs About Friends resonates with the spirit of that era, the key difference being Sharp's sonic acumen. Arrangements that transcend the pop-punk pedigree give uncommon heft to a bumper crop of scrappy sentiments. "Shitstorm" festoons its crunched-up hooks with artful bursts of strings that add cinematic weight to clever wordplay about crazy young love doomed to go south. "I promise not to break your heart," Sharp deadpans. "I'm much more into legs and arms." The horn-driven "I Hate Chicago" turns relationship woes into a brightly lit, dark-humored broadside against the Windy City itself. Embarrassing? Perhaps. Like Nick Hornby's most memorable characters, Girling's bewildered man/boy protagonist is eminently relatable, even at his most cringeworthy.

- Austin Chronicle

Girling is Andy Sharp, Rusty Zagat, Jason Decuir, and Joe Gassman. Girling is a fairly new addition to the Austin music scene. Girling is described as sounding ‘like a bar fight between Ben Folds Five and the Violent Femmes’ at its ReverbNation page. Girling is… well, pretty damn incredible.

My easy-way-out description of the band’s sound would lean toward references to The Promise Ring, Hellbender, and Sunny Day Real Estate. Or to say that Girling are like Weezer without the overwrought pretentiousness. It’s a struggle for me not to simply state that ‘Songs About Friends (Good And Bad)’ is the best emo record I’ve heard in ages – only because I know that there aren’t many people left out there who both remember and care that ‘emo’ originally was a term used to link together bands like Rites Of Spring, Texas Is The Reason, Joshua, Embrace, and the three bands I referenced above, among many others – music built on emotion, passion, and power, with a beautifully distorted guitar sound and lyrical themes covering the gamut of human emotion like love and loss and longing and regret, generally delivered in a somewhat nasally, incredibly plaintive fashion merging pop-punk insolence with a state of pure catharsis. And that’s what Girling sound like.
- Impaler Speaks