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Dude Descending A Staircase | Josh McIntyre heads downstairs, presumably after tucking Little Girls into bed.

LITTLE GIRLS
w/ You Say Party! We Say Die!, Christian Hansen & The Autistics. New City (10081 Jasper Ave). Fri, Nov 27 (9pm). Tickets: $10, available through New City, Blackbird, and Megatunes.

Here’s a lesson in naming your band: consider not only how it will sound being chanted by thousands of adoring fans, but also the kinds of conversations that go on routinely in the music industry — say, between a writer and an editor. To illustrate my point, consider, the following unavoidable phrases posed by Paul, SEE’s friendly neighbourhood A&E editor, that I had to respond to: “Do you like Little Girls?” “You’re doing Little Girls, right?” “Are you keeping on top of Little Girls?” [Huh? There’s a band called Little Girls? —Ed.]

But Little Girls, in this case, refers to a Toronto-based post-punk band lead by one Josh McIntyre. What started out as a solo side project (the not-side project being the noise duo Pirate/Rock) is now a full-on outfit of dudes ready to add weight to McIntyre’s already thick, eerie, only vaguely melodious guitar rumbles and haunting electronic mumbles. “As for the songs having a dark feel, it was never intentional,” explains McIntyre via e-mail, in an effort to rest his voice after coming down with a little laryngitis.

“Most of the dark feeling comes from being up late in my studio alone. It just sort of happened when working on the project.”

What later became the Girls’ 2009 debut LP, Concepts, is a mysterious collection which McIntyre has described as nostalgic and focused on the theme of growing up. With a sample from Frankenstein on the opening track “Youth Tunes” and swirling sonic black holes that devour the echoing vocal tracks, one would be less tempted to describe it less as youthful than boldly or passionately lethargic. And the sound of the album can be fully credited to the auteur behind it — McIntyre played all the instruments himself.

“Working solo was definitely strange for me at first,” he writes. “I’ve played in many bands for years and this was the first time where I had complete control of everything.”

Of course, travelling with a band is far more exciting then continuing the solo pursuits, and sometimes it can be just plain safer. “Crazy road story,” he adds to close the e-mail interview. “We got attacked by a crazy dude with a hammer in Montreal when we were opening for Wavves. He smashed our merch, trashed our van, and threatened us. Pretty strange show.”

They seemed to have survived okay, though. They are, after all, a bunch of grown men, not just some little girls.