Shit Outta Luck (Girl on Run)



Shit Outta Luck is the debut album of the Japanese rock band Girl on Run, released independently on August 19, 1984. After touring for several months throughout England and Wales, they spent 5 weeks at their apartment in Cardiff, practicing and demoing all the songs on their album, By July, they were ready, and they went to Silkcrayon Studios in Cardiff to record. Miyako Azanashi, their drummer, noted, "By studio time alone, Shit Outta Luck was the worst album to record. We were all drunk, stoned, and tired, and we didn't know what we were doing. We were just 16-year-olds trying to make our way."

Shit Outta Luck gained the band a small grassroots following in Wales and England, and while it didn't get on any charts or spawn any singles, fans of the band hold it as one of their finest works.

It didn't chart, but it was well-received. After the release of their popular album Stories from Chernobyl in 1986, it sold more. By 1987, Shit Outta Luck had sold 37,000 copies. The 1989 American reissue sold 19,000 copies.

Composition and style
Shit Outta Luck was heavily influenced by the Welsh rock scene of the early 1980s, and their slow, sludgy riffs were heavily indebted to Tredegar. The album was characterized by the band's notable use of time signatures, downtrend guitar (usually tuned to Drop C#), and their dark lyrical imagery.

According to biographer Lupine Aracene, "The band, and Hichigara especially, felt pressured by the status of Wales at the time. It made her feel forced to write music that was inherently bleak and pessimistic."

Most of the songs are relatively slow, with driving pulse in the rhythm section, and a use of counterpoint. Hichigara made the use of the belting vocal technique, which is controlled screaming.

Many of the songs have alternative tunings. For example, "Lorry" is in C-G-D-G-C-C tuning, "Entrance Song" is in A-A-D-G-B-E tuning, both "Rolling Home" and "Start Again" are in Drop C tuning, and "Windowsill" is in B-G-D-F#-A-D tuning.

Many of the songs have odd time signatures. For example, "Lorry" is in 13/8, "Passenger Pigeon" is in 9/4, "Thames River" uses a metric structure of five bars of 7/8 and two bars of 4/4, and "Payroll" is in 18/8.

It has been described as "Tredegar meeting American no-nonsense garage rock, this album would define a whole subculture in Wales."

This album is the second biggest album made in Wales, with the first being A Night at the Opera by Queen.

Lyrics
Hichigara wrote most of the lyrics for the album. According to an interview in 1986, "I wasn't feeling that great during the release of the album. I wasn't feeling great at all, and Wales wasn't feeling great either. So a lot of the content matter is really dark and surrealistic."

For a year after its release in 1984, Welsh and English radio stations refused to play songs from the album, deeming it "too depressing" and "too complex" for the average English listener.

For instance, "Lorry" is about the IRA and the dozens of terrorist attacks happening during the 1980s. "Payroll" is described by Azanashi as, "a dream in which you don't wake up.", "Start Again" is about Hichigara's addiction to prescription pills, and "Jarhead" is about the American base in Okinawa.

Hichigara's lyrics were very cryptic, and it's only through the explanation of the songs by the bandmates themselves that anyone knows what meanings the songs hold.

Personnel

 * Ayane Hichigara - guitar, vocals, theremin on "I Could've Killed Myself For You"
 * Miyako Azanashi - drums, producing
 * Ichigo Osana - bass, baritone guitar, art, producing
 * Brennand Eian - art