By Nicole Villeneuve

Every Tuesday, Torontoist scours record store shelves in search of the city’s most notable new releases and brings you the best—or sometimes just the biggest—of what we’ve heard in Sound Advice.

Guess who’s back! Toronto’s favourite post-everything fuzz boys, Little Girls. Concepts is their first, proper full-length, and it’s out on Paper Bag Records next Tuesday. If you hate reflective youthful whimsy fuelling no-wave nostalgia, you should probably reassess your life and then go come clean about your shortcomings to super-real baby-faced Little Girls mastermind Josh McIntyre. There is no way Torontoist is doing that for you. For shame.
The rest of you have probably been somewhat aware of the buzz around this bedroom-project-turned-legit-live-act (and, you care); it spiked and went barrelling through the city in June when the Tambourine EP was released and every John-Cusack-as-Rob-Gordon manboy appeared grinning and bouncing at the front of the stage when Little Girls played somewhere near a million showcases during NXNE. The lower-than-lo-fi sound is more atmospheric than anything, but on the dark and buoyant “Growing” (streaming above) they make a mood as good as Psychedelic Furs made for Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink. The spooky “Salt Swimmers” strikes the perfect balance between the technical imperfections and transparent inspirations that drive this project; the prickly guitars and atonal vocal drone give way to the Girls’ trademark surf-goth ascension and count precision. All of Tambourine‘s tracks make it onto Concepts, including the ominous death-pop, Joy Division beat of “Last Call” and the hazy, infectious “Youth Tunes.” It’s a good chance to add them to your growing Little Girls collection with the added substance of other new tracks such as the almost-indie-rock “Thrills” and title track “Concepts,” with their Merge-ready quasi-choir and faux-organ riffs, respectively.
Since the summer, Little Girls have played several shows with Vancouver’s Japandroids, and with the release of Concepts, they are getting ready for more party ’til you die shows all over North America with them, Wavves, You Say Party! We Say Die!, and Monotonix (including a show at the Velvet Underground tomorrow) and other noisy bands in noisy places. McIntyre’s genuine presence and bedroom anthems translate better into a live room than the budget recordings might suggest. Or, at the very least, you can see lots of really hip young people/really once-hip old(er) people and watch the hippest of bands really not give a shit about any of them.