I’ve got a new piece over at The Awl about Girls lead singer Christopher Owens and the Children of God cult. It’s pretty disturbing, but hopefully worth a read for fans of the band and/or people obsessed with bizarre cults.
Given the passion expressed for girl music on this site, I suppose it’s not too much an affront to my masculinity to confess my obsession with the admittedly unmanly band Girls. Their debut record “Album” is forty minutes of melancholy bliss, late night break-up songs that will make you feel like a teenager suffering from a his first encounter with heartbreak. My introduction to the band’s back-story came through Pitchfork (shut up!) whose review featured a little biographical information on the band’s leader, Christopher Owens: “Christopher Owens grew up in the Children of God. His older brother died as a baby because the cult didn’t believe in medical attention. His dad left. He and his mother lived around the world, and the cult sometimes forced his mother to prostitute herself.”
Read it all at The Awl. (It’s kinda NSFW.)
