“And I can hear so much music / And I can feel everything now,” Girls’ Christopher Owens sings on “Forgiveness,” from the San Francisco duo’s 2011 album Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Owens, who revealed earlier this month he would be leaving the group for “personal” reasons, played the song with bassist-producer Chet “JR” White more than three years before its release in a session on New York City’s WNYU. True Panther label boss Dean Bein has posted a recording of that early version of “Forgiveness” along with a heartfelt essay bidding farewell to Girls as we knew them. It’s a stark, simple, almost shambling rendition, which makes the truth of its hopeful lyrics all the more poignant. Girls had only played one show in California before the trip to New York that resulted in this recording, and it’s a fascinating — and fitting — glimpse into the beginnings of a band that a whole lot of people are going to miss. “It’s all working out so good,” White can be heard commenting on the recording. And it was.
