ROOMERS by Egg Girl Girl

ROOMERS, Egg Girl Girl's first and final album (Bumpy Records), blends surveillance-state paranoia and Barbie-car daydreams with distorted bass and disco beats. With 2–4 vocalists always in the mix and influences that span no wave legends to Muppet mayhem, Egg Girl Girl is equal parts prank and punk.

From its inception, Egg Girl Girl turned a defiant shoulder away from rock band logic. When you look for a lead singer, you’ll find a three-part harmony. Where you expect a snappy backbeat, you’ll get a twitchy hissing hi-hat. And when you look for a guitarist? You’ll never find one.

Nothing is so serious as to not be touched by the band’s sticky hands; the band name itself coming from overhearing a CVS customer spell their name for a pharmacist. Egg Girl Girl’s brand of whimsy isn’t in touch with their inner child so much as the inner teen alcoholic. This is part of the band’s operating mischief. What aren’t they willing to muck up?

Encompassing surreal lyrics, earworm melodies, and just enough chaos, ROOMERS is elastic.

"Applecore" offers a punky dance number for falling apart somewhere between Walmart and Walgreens, complete with frenetic soloing from Klug. On "Rich Inner World", Shemroske’s voice cuts through serrated and sharp to paint a neon portrait of big screen TVs and porno mags under the mattress, backed by girl group-style soprano ad libs (and extra cowbell, obviously).

In the Egg Girl Girl World, surging bass and screaming synths devolve into literal howling on "Arlo’s Song", an ode to anxious people and their pet beagles. And "Our Lord And Savior Drinks Bud Light Lime And Drives" deals with feeling like a factory machine rather than a living, breathing artist by singing from the perspective of a sentient Honda Accord.

A spun out adaptation of a children’s hand clap game, "Shimmy Shimmy Cocoa Pop" ends with the band playing too fast to care much for nostalgia. "NYC’s Like a Graveyard" is an almost unrecognizable cover of the Moldy Peaches classic, sung with all the mondegreens–misheard lyrics–that Joy first heard as a tween (listen closely for “all the horses love the way I play my guitar”).

Fan favorite "Post Hole" instructs the audience to do, well, just that. Using the Citizen app. Between catchy hooks, there’s warning to “move like water,” the band finding the time to grapple with state repression by imagining disruption via nudes. And while many artists are opening up about therapy, Egg Girl Girl gives us "DBT Man", wondering if they’re anything more than a dollar sign in their therapist’s eye. Screaming, “It’s a lesson I will learn when I want!” Egg Girl Girl reminds us: ROOMERS isn’t about getting over it anyway.

Egg Girl Girl was an explosion never meant to last forever—but while they were here, they made it count. ROOMERS is not so much of a swan song as it is a supernova. Light a candle, crack a beer, pull a tarot card. Rest in peace, Egg Girl Girl. Your rumors (ROOMERS) live on.

❂ From EGG: "Thank you to every audience member who participated in one of our many antics (whether you kept a balloon from touching the ground, played cup snake, or ate a hot lunch meal); Egg Girl Girl could not have existed without everyone who played along with us. This album is a result of us pushing limits and choosing a way to create that did not exist elsewhere. To Egg Girl Girl fans new and old: please push past your fear, and find curiosity and chaos whenever you can."

Formed in 2022 and burned into legend by 2024, Egg Girl Girl was your favorite queer prank punk band—whether you knew it yet or not.