Los Angeles shoegaze-pop duo Giant Drag never intended to create a musical homage to early-’90s indie rock, but the band’s dreamy, iridescent pop and shimmering guitar work have drawn numerous comparisons to bands like My Bloody Valentine and Mazzy Star. It isn’t without merit: several tracks on the band’s first full-length, Hearts and Unicorns, are awash in the kind of fuzzy, echoey pitch-bending favored by MBV guitarist Kevin Shields. And singer-guitarist Annie Hardy’s vocals are smoky-throated and flirtatious yet childlike, not unlike Mazzy’s Hope Sandoval. “We never set out to sound like anything, either, you know, in live shows or on the recording,” explains Hardy, who has been called the “love child of Kurt Cobain and P.J. Harvey.” “I just have been writing the same style songs since I started writing, which was in the ’90s. So I guess any similarities to these ’90s bands is perhaps ’cause my songwriting hasn’t progressed much since I started doing it.” Modesty aside, some critics have latched on to the term “nu-grunge” to categorize the band’s referential sound—an association that makes Hardy a little uneasy. “It’s pretty much a British thing,” Hardy says of the term. “They seem to always like to name the new trend going on or the new movement, even if it doesn’t really exist. ‘Nu’ anything doesn’t seem like it’s ever gonna be a compliment.” Giant Drag are Hardy and Micah Calabrese, two twenty-something friends who met reluctantly through Hardy’s mother, a playwright and co-worker of Calabrese who thought the two would be a good fit musically. Both resisted—Calabrese didn’t want to meet some “Jewel wannabe” and Hardy wasn’t interested in meeting a “Creed impostor.” The two did meet eventually, and after jamming on Hardy’s dreamy fuzz-pop for a month, they were ready to take the show live—sort of. “We actually got a show booked before we were actually a band,” Hardy explained. “My friend asked me to open for his band The Adored, and Micah and I had been playing together. So I was like, ‘Dude, I booked a show. Either you can play it with me or I can go it alone.’ And he was like, ‘Ah, I’m not gonna let you go out like that.’ So we had a month to put together a set and find a bass player. But one day just as a joke, Micah started playing a synthesizer and drums at the same time. We were like—well, first we laughed—and then we were like, ‘Oh shit, this totally works. Fuck a bass player.’ ” Three shows later, the band parlayed their unpredictable pop gems into a monthlong residency at the hipster hangout Silverlake Lounge, which eventually led to another monthlong residency at the popular club Spaceland. Somewhere in between, the local Los Angeles radio station Indie 103, itself a startup on the market, snagged a demo of the band’s cynical, poppy anti-ballad “This Isn’t It” for rotation. It’s a song that bursts open with a heavy, ringing guitar riff and shuffling beat, pinpointing that moment in a relationship when you know your intended isn’t your intended after all. (“It’s about a shitty boyfriend,” Hardy has said.) “Love, love, love / this isn’t it,” Hardy declares at the second chorus, heavier on ennui than heartache. Then it shifts to finger pointing: “Love, love, love / you wouldn’t know it if it hit you,” before the song erupts in a wall of noise and squalor. The band’s material expanded, including sparser numbers like “Cordial Invitation” that illustrate the kind of lyrical turns Giant Drag songs take when you least expect. “Your dreeeeeam,” Hardy draws out longingly over a sultry acoustic strum, “is my nightmare.” One night, the band suddenly had an audience. “You’d just notice week after week more people showing up, until the place was at capacity,” said Hardy. “And you’re like, ‘What the fuck—how did this happen?’ ” The band have since toured the UK and most recently played Coachella. By most accounts, a big part of the live show’s appeal is Hardy’s knack for onstage banter. Part filler and part crowd control, her references to periods, bodily functions or her various clever ways to shut down requests to bare her breasts all become fodder during the 60 seconds or so of downtime Calabrese needs to reset his keyboard between songs. “That all started at the first show,” Hardy explains. “At practice there was no problem, but at a live show, it takes almost a minute for Micah to reset his synthesizer. ’Cause it’s all analog, and he has to set it for a different sound on every song. So I was like, ‘Shit, I better say something, or else it’s gonna be really awkward for a minute.’ It’s nothing that I make up beforehand. It’s just whatever’s going on that day or what people are saying to me from the crowd. I don’t go out to shock people; that’s the way I’ve always been since I was a kid.” Hardy first attempted playing guitar when she was 11, but lack of instruction kept her from progressing until her late teens. There, at boarding school in Orange County, she spent her adolescence like most would-be guitarists: holed up in her bedroom learning riffs. In her case it was The Beatles, and she was quick to document her aspirations. “I actually thought I invented the concept of the four-track, ’cause I’ve always been too proud to learn from guys and wanted to figure it out on my own,” Hardy says, laughing. “I had a stereo with two tape decks, and I’d record something on one tape deck and move it over to the other one and stick a new tape in. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’ve invented something amazing.’ Then I told one of my guy friends about it, and they’re like, ‘Dude, why don’t you just go get a four-track—it’s the same thing, only you don’t have to use like 40 different cassette tapes.’ I was like, ‘Oh.’ ” Hardy reacts with the same dry amusement to the response the band’s song titles have gotten. Titles such as “YFLMD” (which stands for “You Fuck Like My Dad”) and “My Dick Sux” are altered on the record to appease Wal-Mart and other major retailers. According to Hardy, the nonsensical titles—like that of lead track “Kevin Is Gay,” which includes one verse meowed instead of sung—were just random jokes applied after the fact without an audience in mind. “All of that was done when we were just becoming a band, and there was no thought of ever putting a record out,” Hardy said. “You know, I didn’t think of the consequences of people concentrating on the song titles. Everything was done really freely, which may not be the case on the next record.” As for the Nashville show, Hardy hasn’t planned anything in advance. “I don’t really know what to expect,” Hardy mused. “I guess, expect two of us, music, and talking.”
