Horsegirl is an American rock band from Chicago. The band members are Nora Cheng (guitar, vocals), Penelope Lowenstein (guitar, vocals), and Gigi Reece (drums) The group originated in 2019 and they self-released their first song, “Forecast”, that year. The group released their first EP, Horsegirl: Ballroom Dance Scene et cetera, through Sonic Cathedral Recordings in 2020. Paste named the EP one of the 25 best EP’s of 2020.
In November 2021, the group released another song, “Billy”, their first on Matador Records. The song was named one of Rolling Stone’s “Songs You Need to Know”. Alongside the song, the group released a cover of Minutemen’s song “History Lesson – Part II”.
In June 2022, the band released their debut album, Versions of Modern Performance, via Matador Records. Also in June they released “Dirtbag Transformation (Still Dirty),” as the lead single from their debut album. In-step with a string of incredibly well-received singles, “Dirtbag Transformation (Still Dirty)” is a scuffed up, guitar-driven piece of garage-pop. The tracks’ lyrics brim with alliteration and slanted rhymes, and as the instrumentation rises, the song rides out with a chorus of “oohs.” For the song’s video, Horsegirl and friends, were given the reins to Lowenstein’s elementary school where they filmed all day. As a band who do everything as a unit, from songwriting to trading vocal duties and swapping instruments to sound and visual art design, this new video captures the essence of this trio’s special bond.
The band elaborates: “The three of us filmed the ‘Dirtbag Transformation (Still Dirty)’ video over one day in Penelope’s elementary school. The video provides a small look into our Chicago youth scene—it includes members of bands like Lifeguard, Friko, Dwaal Troupe, and Post Office Winter all grouped into oddball bands with weird gimmicks. We always have the best time making our videos with our friends in spaces we feel connected to. All of our friends showed up with various assortments of clothing and props, like wooden spoons, a bowling shirt collection, and an accordion. We wanted to harness the strangeness of everything that was brought to us, and wanted to showcase all of the people and bands that mean so much to us.”
Chicago is baked into the core of Versions of Modern Performance. Cheng, Lowenstein, and Reece learned to play—and met—through the significant network of Chicago youth arts programs, and they have their own mini-rock underground. They’re exultant about their friends’ talent, noting that any of the bands from that scene could have been (or might still be!) plucked up the way they were. Across the album, recorded at Chicago’s Electrical Audio with John Agnello, there’s elements of the ‘80s and ‘90s independent music the band love so deeply and sincerely. But as Horsegirl fuse all of this together, it feels not like a pastiche or a hacky retread but something as playful and unique as its predecessors.
