Giant Princess

A name to suit the sound, Giant Princess was just that, GIANT! The room was packed, and there’s something about being blasted with 110 decibels of “Fun Machine” as you inhale the bouquet of deodorants and lack thereof that really really gets me going. Watch out for these guys; I am making the prediction now. They will be the new big thing in 2010.
- indiehouston

When I was reading up on the show, I found out about another band on the bill. Giant Princess. They are so amazing. With the first song I was hooked. They have blended a beautiful form of rock reminiscent of Echo & the Bunnymen and fused it with the happier indie minimal style of a band like Half Japanese. - Evolve Happy

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com.

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If you could input a bunch of information into a computer in a Weird Science-like effort to create the most indie band in the world, after the unexplainable lightning storm, Giant Princess would be standing in your room. Houston already loves them - we hear tell that every other local musician at Summer Fest this past weekend (Young Mammals, B L A C K I E, Tontons) was wearing a GP T-shirt.
They're brash and aggressive and sweet, and their music is way smarter than people realize. (At least that's what it feels like.) We finally got with them for an interview and, truth be told, don't think they actually answered one single question. It was way better than we were expecting.
Rocks Off: The first thing we feel like we need to ask about is the name. Why "Giant Princess"? Does it in any way involve Rick Moranis or Super Mario Bros., because that would be great.
Giant Princess: I had a dream that I was a little kid and the dad from Honey I Shrunk the Kids showed up in the dream. He repeatedly told me to touch his giant princess. I didn't know what he was talking about. He was mad and he threatened to shrink me with a Nintendo 64 controller. We all had this dream.

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RO: As far as the indie scene is concerned, who is just not the band? Like, everyone is (rightfully) praising the underground scene right now, but not everyone can be phenomenal. So, who's terrible. And if you don't answer, that means you're racist.
GP: All the following bands are complete trash: Young Mammals, B L A C K I E, Ghost Mountain, Ghormeh Sabzi and Somosuno. They suck. Tell 'em to give it up. Oh yeah, and Dustin Wilson. He just moved here from Mobile, Ala. He's a terrible singer-songwriter we are going to be playing a bunch of shows with soon. Try and avoid it if you can.
RO: We think you all should do more songs like "I Was Born on the Sun." Once you get past the filibustery intro, it feels - to us anyway - like your strongest, most representative song. Do you all have favorite songs? Which do you think are ya'll's best? Worst?
GP: Got a couple songs in [our] brain right now, all of which are solid gold.
RO: Can you elaborate?
GP: To elaborate, I got a zillion. Like this little hot jazz number called "Booty Truck." We don't really play that one anymore, though, but it's my favorite.
RO: We remember catching your live show a time or two. The first time was at the Westheimer Block Party thing. It was loads of fun. Collin, at your live shows, is it your intention to a) literally rock your face off; and b) look as uncool as possible while doing so? Because if so, then thumbs up.

?Collin: I don't really have any intentions, but that's cool, right?
RO: The coolest. Seriously, when are we going to finally be able to buy a new full-length Giant Princess LP? Do you all have anything in the works?
GP: Splits, EPs, a flexodisc, cassette tape, all in the works but no long-player full length. Come to our shows and we'll whisper you the info.
RO: [laughs] Let's say you were given the opportunity to drive some wicked cool Range Rover brand-new off the showroom floor. It's yours absolutely free, but only on the condition that the license plates will read "KIDMOLSTR." You taking it or what?
GP: Only assholes drive Range Rovers, but yes we would accept, then trade it for a tour van. But we'd keep the license plate.
Keep tabs on the fivesome at www.myspace.com/giantprincess.
- Houston Press

Giant Princess
In the not-so-distant past, I’ll admit that I’ve been up-and-down on the Giant Princess crew — live, they’ve been utterly phenomenal, a bluesy, gritty, quirky rock powerhouse of a band up there on the stage, coming off like The White Stripes if Jack White had never gone the route of James Bond theme songs and cleaner production and instead just chilled out with some buds in the back yard. In recorded form, I’ve been kind of “meh,” at least ’til now. What’s turned it around for me’s being able to check out their brand-new Mexican Easter EP, a tape-only release you can thankfully also check out online (no download, unfortunately; thanks to Michael “B L A C K I E” LaCour for sending the link my way, btw) that truly captures what I dig about the band live. The music’s raw but friendly, bluesy but indie-tinged, with songs that drift and roar in equal measure, like the aforementioned pseudo-garage-rockers crossed with the oddball-ness of The Pixies and the slacker chill of Pavement. And yep, it’s all good. - Space City Rock

Giant Princess, the first opening band and another local favorite, put on a loud and intense set that successfully turned the front half of the crowd into a roiling, jumping mass of teenage energy. By the third song, the heat was stifling, and some dancers were showing signs of exhaustion. But Giant Princess, who were also celebrating the release of their new EP, Mexican Easter, stayed highly energetic throughout the set. They played a mix of old and new material, with new songs “Gun Play” and “I’m Gonna Live and You’re Gonna Die” standing out. - Space City Rock

Giant Princess doesn't play music, it plays music like the world is going to end. The band plays with such energy and joy that when Colin is thrashing his guitar, Jaime is beating the shit out of his kit, and Diego is keeping the Fun Machine alive enough to make it through another show it IS the most important band in the world. These guys mix elements of pop, garage, and psych with little care as to any incongruity. Their signature song Adventure screams with a sense of possibility and joy that demands you to get your sorry ass up; you can rest when you are dead! I can't speak any higher of a band. Just see them and you will understand. (NOTM Score 2-1) - 29-95.com/ Houston Chronicle

My friends and I manage to make it to the KTRU Stage where Giant Princess is performing. It's great to finally see this local band play. Their sound is like a rockier Arcade Fire vocal from lead singer Collin Hedrick. Their use of piano along with the regular three-piece made for an interesting sound that you were sometimes able to head bang to and other times stand back and appreciate.

I can't help but feel like Giant Princess' music should be in a movie of some sort — a Michael Cera movie anyone? - Culture Map

Collin Hedrick, frontman for local indie rockers Giant Princess, says that the thought of making a career out of music is the furthest thing from his mind, if for no other reason than sheer practicality.

“We don’t make no money. I mean, we will take money. It’s not that we don’t accept it. But we never get paid to do this. And we never do this to get paid.”

Giant Princess does not do what a rock band is supposed to do, and the members certainly don’t look like what a rock band is supposed to look like. Slim, lanky Hedrick comes across like a 1950s gas station attendant or minor league relief pitcher, baseball cap and all. Keyboardist Diego P. Arcienega’s loafers, khaki shorts, mustache and thick glasses make him look more than anything like an accountant relaxing on a weekend. Only drummer Jaime Nava’s shoulder-length black hair signifies something clearly rock ’n’ roll, and even that’s a bit of a grunge-y anachronism for an indie-rocker in 2010. Looking at the core members of Giant Princess standing together, it’s not clear how they would even know each other, let alone that they play in one of Houston’s most buzzed-about underground bands.

Grass-roots success
Since forming a couple of years ago, Giant Princess has become one of the centerpieces of Houston’s DIY indie scene. Their debut album, Zip Zop Wow, previously available at select live shows on homemade CD-Rs and sporadically via download on their MySpace, has just been pressed to vinyl; to celebrate the “official” release, the band headlines a show this Saturday at Fitzgerald’s as part of IndieHouston.org’s two-year anniversary celebration (Darwin’s Finches, B L A C K I E, Young Girls and a “live magician” are also on the bill).

“I really fell for (that album),” says Robert De Los Santos, who co-founded Indie Houston with a group of former and current University of Houston students looking to get involved in local music. “It became my favorite thing to play in the car. I like the energy. ... It’s not easy to explain, but it feels old and new at the same time.”

Defiantly weird, lo-fi by virtue of aesthetic as much as circumstance, willfully obtuse but still undeniably rock, Zip Zop Wow recalls everything from late-’70s New Zealand home recording pioneers such as the Clean to modern-day weirdo punks No Age to ’60s Texas garage rockers the Seeds. The group completed the album quickly and spontaneously in late 2007.

Growing up in refinery towns
Hedrick grew up in La Porte, meeting Pasadena natives Nava and Arcienega while attending San Jacinto College. If the members of Giant Princess don’t fit the traditional mold of how a rock band is expected to look and act, they were even more atypical as creative outsider kids growing up in Texas refinery towns.

“There are a lot of cliques in high schools,” says Hedrick, “but there it was guys who were like, ‘We’re gonna be plant workers.’ They’d wear the jumpsuits and hang out together and act all tough. They didn’t have driver’s licenses yet. Thirteen-year-old kids all excited about working at the plant someday.”

Though they all speak highly of their hometowns (particular praise is reserved for Pasadena’s City Cafe restaurant), Nava says that music provided a vital means of escape. “You feel smothered. You feel like you’re never going to get out. There’s a lot of aggression. Growing up listening to music, being into music, meant a lot.”

“All our dads work at plants,” Arcienega says. “And we’re in a band called Giant Princess.”

A proper release
A legitimate album release is something new for a band with no discernible goal other than to make music and let someone else sort out the particulars. For Zip Zop Wow’s initial CD-R “release,” Hedrick says the group “went to a paper company and bought sleeves, and all our friends drew different things. That’s why a lot of our songs have different titles, and why the album had a lot of different titles, because we’d just get bored.

“KTRU played one of our songs once, and the DJ said “OK, that was Giant Princess from their first release Gigantic Leopard. And I thought, huh, that one’s new to me.”

De Los Santos says that he was more than happy to give Giant Princess the chance to release the album on a more “legitimate” format, pointing to Indie Houston’s hand in local indie-poppers the McKenzies’ CD release as inspiring them to “help more local bands release records ... . We want to do something for local bands that we really believe in.”

Giant Princess, for their part, are characteristically nonchalant about the whole affair (during our interview they tended to be more enthusiastic about the songs they released on last Summer’s Mexican Easter cassette EP) but nevertheless are happy to see Zip Zop Wow pressed onto wax. Hedrick admits “I honestly don’t have a copy of those songs anymore, except what I can get off the Internet.”

If the impossibility of a career was a foregone conclusion, it never prevented the band from playing music. All that’s left is a love of playing. Nava, a multi-instrumentalist who plays in nearly a half-dozen groups, says he always wanted to be in a band growing up, and that’s all that matters to him. As for when he might give music up?

“Probably when I’m dead, or in a wheelchair. No ... I guess I can still play a guitar in a wheelchair.”

Giant Princess plays with B L A C K I E, Darwin's Finches, Young Girls and a magic show, 8 p.m., Saturday at Fitzgerald's They've also just been added to the Ghoulsfest lineup. - 29-95.com/ Houston Chronicle

First of all, there's really no need to read this review. Giant Princess isn't even selling this album; they're giving it away for free. You can download the whole thing with no jumping through hoops at the three links at the bottom of the review. Whether what I say about the recording entices you or repulses you, there is no excuse for not trying something freely given.
That being said, you might as well hear my thoughts while you wait for it to download. Giant Princess's self-titled debut recording is an exercise in all the wonderful things you can do with a bad recording of good songs, and I do mean a bad recording. The mix is a "mix" only in the loosest sense of the word, with the vocals all but unintelligible and the organ so far up front you might as well be sitting next to it. That's the total genius of the album. Just like the Pixies forced you to see through the haze of noise into the weird minds of Frank Black and Kim Deal, so are we pulled into the awesomely loose song style that makes up Giant Princess. When you pull the blues up to the red line and speed it up, this is what you get. It's an unstoppable journey of energy and insanity that makes me proud that we're both from Houston.
I do wish that some sort of lyric sheet was provided with the recording, because I have no idea what Collin Hedrick is saying. I can only assume that with titles like "zip zop wow" and "lifetime sexbrain" that it's either surrealistically genius or complete irrelevant. In fact, the complete lack of any information on how or why these songs exist only serves to further the belief that the album is being beamed in from some wonderful dimension where music didn't fall into decline.
More and more, I am becoming convinced that the world is actively hiding awesome music from the populace. Like slavemasters outlawing the teaching of reading and writing to slaves, the miasmic music industry is struggling at hundreds of thousands of kilowatts to convince us that 3 Doors Down and their ilk has anything at all relevant to say. Meanwhile, artists like Giant Princess have to scream themselves hoarse just to whisper the true evolution of rock and roll. They have to give away an album that twenty years ago you would have paid through the nose to own a special vinyl edition of.
Rough, amateur, and loud, I guarantee that Giant Princess is just what you need. - Space City Rock

This week, I am excited to see my friends, Magic Jewels, play in Houston. When I was reading up on the show, I found out about another band on the bill. Giant Princess. They are so amazing. With the first song I was hooked. They have blended a beautiful form of rock reminiscent of Echo & the Bunnymen and fused it with the happier indie minimal style of a band like Half Japanese. Check out their MySpace for links to download their debut CD. The download is free, but be aware that some of the links could be spyware. I have uploaded some of their tracks, on my own, for those that just want to hear the sweet sounds. - Evolve Happy Dot Com