What Losing Today magazine say about I Want The Tsunami

"And before the more discerning kids among you with an ear for spiky candy pop start deluging my inbox with emails pointing out the fact that this album is a year old, yes, yes, yes, I know. And the reason the review is now and not then, well cue the feeble excuse alert, there is, I swear, a CD black hole in this rabbit hutch we laughingly call a listening room that even Stephen Hawkins would marvel at and poor old ‘I want the Tsunami’ has been its latest victim. Salvaged, polished up and doing a fair amount of damage on the Hi-Fi since being rescued, the Girlinky debut long-player.

Two singles on, ‘Hai Wakarimashita!’ and the latest cut ‘Newspaper Round’ (both featured here) and we happily admit to being smitten by the whole thing. Taking their source inspiration from the much missed BiS and to a greater extent Helen Love, these cute kids cleverly tune into the same wayward schizoid branch of pop as the psychotic Zea and the immense Winterbrief all set against the spacey whirly warbly sounds so often found gracing the discs of those other impish torch bearers of quick fire catchy tuneage, Fonda 500. Girlinky across twelve tracks zap you to oblivion with their combustible take on electro-clash, twee (the heart racing ‘I dare you to make me happy’) and trash punk pop (‘My huge head’), all mixed up into such an infectious floorshow that feet go a tapping uncontrollably followed closely by hips, arms, hearts and almost any household object that isn’t nailed to the floor.

With a love for computer games, animations, cartoons, Casio’s and 80’s electro pop this Anglo-Antipodean quartet raise the ante on bittersweet pop. Think Buggles (and before you turn away in embarrassment thinking ‘Video killed the Radio Star’ think more ‘Clean, Clean’), New Musik and early Kim Wilde backing tunes all wound up so tautly to the point of breakdown and then let loose unleashing a furious feel good feast of toxic spasmodic pop grooves flipping their wigs in cyberspace.

Opening with the current escapee into a world of sterile pop, ‘Newspaper Round’ is all tender boy / girl romanticism and tantalisingly tenacious hooks that spar between your ears, summer filled fun, erratic electronics and as loveable a thing as you can get in a sub three-minute environment. ‘Hai Wakarimashita!’ quickly follows, chaotic fuzz pop replete with jaunty Pixies-like bass lines, martial arts movie samples and packed to the brim with the kind of angular riffs and maddening time signatures that would no doubt give Mark E Smith seizures. Elsewhere the Francophile cute-ness of the ripping ‘Mister Convoluted’ wanders closely to ‘Lazarus’ era Boo Radleys while ‘New Rock’ struts smugly powered by space rock (et) fuel.

And just when you think you have the measure of them in they come to clout you with the ultimate sucker punches. The floaty jazz-esque dynamics of the ultra sensitive ‘Cowboy Conscience’ appear as if by magic through an ethereal haze managing to strike a tricky balance between a lulling Belle and Sebastian trapped in some kind of daydream and a boy band tripping out a slow burning festive epic. Best of the lot though is ‘Dunedin’, softly alluring, delicately drifting amid loose post rock riffs ‘n’ wintry landscapes and finding a mid way point between Archer Prewitt and Caroline Know doing Go Betweens. Now that’s neat. Ingenious pop carnage for all."