Versions of Modern Performance

For fans of ’90s indie rock—your Sonic Youths, your Breeders, your Yo La Tengos—Versions of Modern Performance will serve as cosmic validation: Even the kids know the old ways are best. But who influenced you is never as important as what you took from them, a lesson that Chicago’s Horsegirl understands intuitively. Instead, the art is in putting it together: the haze of shoegaze and the deadpan of post-punk (“Option 8”, “Billy”), slacker confidence and twee butterflies (“Beautiful Song”, “World of Pots and Pans”). Their arty interludes they present not as free-jazz improvisers, but a teenage garage band in love with the way their amps hum (“Bog Bog 1”, “Electrolocation 2”).