

After drumming with The Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, and occasionally The Dum Dum Girls, Frankie Rose moved to guitar and put together The Outs, an all-women outfit with a sound that complements all those bands. Multitudinous layers of reverb buoy Rose’s airy singing. Adding shimmer like a string of jewels, her vocals glow around everything from the guitars (both twangy and shoegazey) to the rumbling bass, snappy snares, and jangling tambourines. This debut showcases a number of strengths, namely the band’s ability to move gracefully from moody navel-gazing (“Hollow Life”) to navel-gazing with Phil Spector flourishes (“Save Me”), and from roaring pop hookage (“Girlfriend Island”) to volcanic garage punk (“Don’t Tread”). If The Cramps had ever hooked up with The Mamas & The Papas, it might have sounded like “Must Be Nice.” The hidden gem here may be a cover of the late composer/artist Arthur Russell’s haunting “You Can Make Me Feel Bad,” with dark scratches of guitar providing the sparest musical accompaniment.