Parenthetical Girls

Begun as the home recording project of former childhood friends in the failed mill town of Everett, Washington, the membership of Parenthetical Girls—in mutual disinterest and indifference—quietly chipped away at itself until only one particularly under-qualified member, singer and relative non-musician Zac Pennington, remained.

As long on ambition as he was short on musical aptitude, Pennington willed what was little more than a particularly arduous band name into a recording partnership with some of his especially capable acquaintances—namely The Dead Science’s Jherek Bischoff and Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart. That partnership became a record called (((GRRRLS))) (2004), released on Pennington’s newly-christened vanity label, Slender Means Society.

Soon after Pennington moved to Portland, Parenthetical Girls became something of an actual band—though mostly in the non-committal sense: comprised first of (a much-indebted) Pennington, Bischoff, and Bischoff’s Dead Science-mate Sam Mickens, and eventually just Pennington and Mickens. This core trio would ultimately produce Safe as Houses (2006), a record that would go on to some critical acclaim.

Following the release of Safe as Houses, the band fatefully settled on a more stable line-up, adding to its ranks several recent Portland imports in Matt Carlson, Rachael Jensen, and Eddy Crichton—multi-instrumentalists each—whose full-time membership would eventually help to shape Parenthetical Girls in their own respective images. After several lengthy tours in the U.S. and Europe in support of Safe as Houses, the four piece convened with producer Bischoff to begin preparations for Entanglements, their third LP (to be released September 9th, 2008).