Occasionally, a band pops up with a sound so rich you can actually feel the waves go through you. Something in the balance of sounds and tonal composition blend to create music that seems to matter in a way so as to catch you pleasantly off guard.
Atlanta-based Girlyman solicits just such feelings of awe for any enthusiasts of the pop-folk genre. Within seconds, you feel personally obligated to purchase their music and make damn sure they have no excuse to stop filling the world with more of it.
The band started with three musically inclined friends living together in Brooklyn, N.Y., After playing a few shows as separate acts on the same bill, Doris Muramatsu, Tylan Greenstein and Nate Borofsky decided to schedule a rehearsal to see what they could come up with. Unfortunately, the date of that initial jam session was Sept. 11, 2001, and New York had different plans.
“When we did come back after that, we [had] a real sense of doing a project that was going to be fun for us right now,” Borofsky said. “Something that makes us feel good right now. There were a few months when we never knew what was going to happen. Living in New York at that time, I don’t feel there was a huge amount of terror in the music that we did. It was quite the opposite. It made us really want to do something that felt joyful.”
That theme has been steadfastly carried through the past eight years that the band has grown and produced music.
Though Girlyman became a symbol of their optimism, it was also an ode to their self-proclaimed misfit dispositions, offering solace to those fans that felt similarly.
“If you put the three of us in a blender that’s probably what you’d get,” Borofsky said of their androgynous name and styles. “I wear makeup on stage, Ty usually wears a vest and tie on stage. There is some degree to which we feel like we don’t quite fit in, particularly with gender. The name is also very light hearted. It’s very hard to take what we’re doing too seriously with a band that’s called Girlyman.”
Based on these feelings of not quite fitting in, it seems all the more phenomenal that the group has developed such an inclusive sound. Not only do their three-part harmonies complement each other flawlessly, but their poignant lyrics guarantee that each song on their new release Everything’s Easy creates a musical mirror that reflects a piece of any active listener.
It makes you wonder how it is possible that these three individuals know you so well. This feeling of closeness and intimacy is likely a result of the member’s playful and nurturing interaction with each other.
“There’s a lot of love between us,” Borofsky said. “I feel like I get to tour around with my two best friends. There really is that kind of connection between the three of us.”
That connection is evident in their music, and notoriously carries over to their live performance.
“What we try to do in shows is connect with a deeper part of ourselves and each other and hope that doing that can help others get in touch with deeper parts of themselves,” Borofsky said.
The new album is a sentimental, delightful array of nostalgia and emotion. It feels sincere and pure without being safe. Much of the album’s authenticity stems from their self-producing approach. After raising money from their devoted fans for a $10,000 microphone, the members of Girlyman focused their energy on creating an entire album from their home.
“In the past when we’ve recorded it has always been in a studio,” Borofsky said. “There was a degree of time pressure, because we were paying by the hour, to get things recorded quickly. With this CD we really took our time, to try out ideas that were different. It was wonderful to be able to play around like that—to make mistakes and learn from what we were doing. We got a finished product that really honored the song.”
The members of Girlyman are the face and sound of a new cultural identity, which focuses more on quality than category. They may not be as easily labeled as bands of past generations, but there is a freedom and soulfulness to their music that must be credited to their acceptance of themselves and one another.
Their music follows suit, fearlessly merging sounds and styles to fill whatever role the trio chooses. With the completely cool uniqueness of Girlyman’s dynamic, it really makes you wonder who decided “fitting in” was a good thing to begin with.