For all the forward-looking records to emerge from the United States this year ”“ Bitte Orca, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Veckatimest et al ”“ Girls’ Album (the most unGoogleable long-player since...er...Women’s self-titled debut) proves that, at the end of this crazy decade, all you really need to be happy is a decent record collection and a catchy tune. The San Francisco duo’s first full-length covers a hodgepodge of influences, the likes of which make bedsit bloggers like myself get hot under the collars of our chequered shirts; shoegaze, doo-wop, Iggy and both Elvises all get a look-in, but over the course of Album’s twelve tracks, it’s tough to determine where pastiche meets plagiarism.Girls are responsible for a couple of already-classic singles, which have been doing the rounds for the last twelve months; presented on Album in newly polished form, 'Lust for Life' and 'Hellhole Ratrace' sound better than ever. The latter, self-consciously placed as the album’s centrepiece, remains as awe-inspiring as ever ”“ a slow-building seven-minute epic which goes nowhere fast, but gets there beautifully. Meanwhile, the effortless gender-bending jangle of ‘Lust for Life’ masks singer Christopher Owens’ plaintive pleas for post-breakup comfort, which should really have arrived for him when everything kicks in at the start of the song’s second verse. Indeed, the whole album seems to trace the wake of a messy split, with Owens attempting to reconcile the actions of both his ex and himself. During the bouncy swagger of ‘Laura’, he states prosaically “You’ve been a bitch/I’ve been an ass/I don’t wanna point the finger...” ”“ a sentiment that every self-respecting ‘gentleman’ should be all too familiar with ”“ while the gorgeously ghostly ‘Lauren Marie’ sees a determined Owens assuring the girl in question that “I may never get my arms around you, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t try.”On other tracks, however, these tricks don’t serve him half as well; ‘Ghost Mouth’ literally is ‘Hellhole Ratrace’ part 2 ”“ and not in a good way ”“ and tracks like ‘God Damned’ and ‘Darling’ (as well as its pointless instrumental introduction ‘Curls’) are nothing more than underwritten throwaways. Meanwhile, an exercise in meta-pop, the vulnerable pay off of 'Big Bad Mean Mother Fucker' ”“ that for all Owens’ bravado, he’s only trying to “make you believe” that he’s the eponymous bad-boy ”“ explains the barrage of noise which swamps its lyrics, but doesn’t quite excuse its almost-painful simplicity. Far more appealing is the Swervedriving ‘Morning Light’, an astonishingly accurate recreation of everything that ever made Creation Records great ”“ paper-thin vocals buried by deliriously Shields-esque glideguitar - condensed into 150 seconds.In an interview from the late-nineties from the peerless documentary DiG!, an A&R man described the Brian Jonestown Massacre as “a thoroughly postmodern music...a pastiche of everything...the greatest sixties revivalists there has been since the sixties”. If that’s the case, then Girls are most assuredly following Anton Newcombe’s crazy footsteps, leaving behind a disappointingly inconsistent debut which doesn’t quite deliver on the band’s formative flashes of genius. However, if nothing else, Album proves that Girls might just be the greatest sixties revivalists there has been since the Brian Jonestown Massacre.