Big Ten-Inch Record #21
Nerdy Girl — Nerdy Girl
(from the 10″ EP Nerdy Girl, No Life Records 1994)
When I knew Cecil Castellucci, she was a grown woman who still slept on Star Wars sheets. (Not that I ever saw them, mind, but she told me about them.) A native of Montreal who went by the nom de twee-pop of Cecil Seaskull, she more or less was Nerdy Girl, who released a handful of records in the mid-’90s. This song about her childhood Star Wars fixation was her signature tune, but my other favorite was always “Single Bed,” from Nerdy Girl’s sole full-length, 1996’s Twist Her. After she dropped the Nerdy Girl moniker, Cecil released an album around 1998 called Whoever, and then we pretty much fell out of contact. (Frankly, I fell out of contact with a lot of people around 1998 — it was a really bad year.) I googled her just now out of curiosity, and I learned that she lives in Los Angeles now, where she’s had several young adult novels published. People tended to have extreme reactions about Nerdy Girl: I knew some people who found both the diary-entry quality of Cecil’s lyrics and her undeniably polarizing voice just the height of preciousness. Me, I have to admire someone who starts a project with a very specific aesthetic, stays true to it for as long as it’s viable and then retires it when she’s taken it as far as it can go.
–Stewart Mason
Peter Collins said,
February 11, 2009 @ 11:43 am
I shuddered when I read ‘polarising voice’, but I ended up liking this. No extreme reaction - it has a charm of its own, and it’s nowhere near the best or worst thing I’ve ever heard. Thanks for putting it up.
Stewart said,
February 11, 2009 @ 12:11 pm
It may well specifically have been Cecil Seaskull that my wife was talking about when she coined the term “wispy little-girl voices” to describe a type of singer I tend to like and she tends to hate.
Brian said,
February 11, 2009 @ 7:39 pm
Actually this sounds less like a little-girl voice than if a grown man inhaled some helium or had his voice computer’d up to sound like a kid. I don’t hate it at all…in fact this song is awesome. A calming and weirdly moving artifact from a time before being “nerdy” was integrated into mainstream culture. Bring the wookiee to me, indeed.
M castawave said,
February 13, 2009 @ 1:56 am
I totally agree with the last part of what you said.
m
Kevin said,
February 13, 2009 @ 4:17 pm
An ex-GF put this on a mixtape for me some 12 or 13 years ago. I’ve always loved the song. Thanks for posting this, now I can carry it around on my iPod.
Anonymous said,
February 13, 2009 @ 6:45 pm
reminds me, kindof sortof, of azalia snail