Introducing: Girls in Trouble

Who: Alicia Jo Rabins (vocals, violin), Aaron Hartman (bass).  

Sounds like: Soaring folk ballads mixed with dark 1990s alt-rock and Jewish theology.

For fans of: Andrew Bird, Nina Nastasia, the Torah.

For anyone who ever recycled the classic "dog ate my homework" line to get out of a school assignment, local singer-songwriter Alicia Jo Rabins will do you one better.

"It started as a way to get out of writing a master's thesis, but it actually ended up being one of my main musical projects," Rabins says of her Girls in Trouble project, which she formed in 2007 while studying Jewish women's studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. After struggling to come up with thesis ideas, one of Rabins' professors, who had seen her play in bands around New York City, suggested she combine her music with her research. The result is what Rabins calls “indie-folk art pop,” centered on women of the Torah. 

Growing up in a non-practicing Jewish family, Rabins became curious about her heritage and studied in Jerusalem for two years while still in school. There, she learned Hebrew and ancient Aramaic so she could read the original texts. This exploration didn't stop with her education. Rabins—along with her husband and bassist, Aaron Hartman, and a rotating cast of musicians—have since put out two full-length albums, on which Andrew Bird comes to mind as much as Miriam or the Three Patriarchs. Classically trained in violin from age 3, Rabin is also passionate about traditional American folk, often looping melodies around layers of jangly guitar, low and lilting cello or more polished pop elements. 

"Because I've played all this different kind of music in my life," Rabins says, "one of the fun things about this project is that I get to decide kind of playfully and artistically which song is going to be in which genre and how to best interpret the characters.” 

On the latest Girls in Trouble album, Open the Ground, the story of the daughters of Zelophehad, the first female landowners, is told over the upbeat disco rock of "New Arithmetic." Later, "Separate Histories," an African-influenced song with staccato plucks of distorted violin, explores Ruth, the first Jewish convert, and how Rabins herself relates to her plight.

"I'm really fascinated by the idea that life was always super-complicated, and that it's not just a modern phenomenon to feel like your life is really messed up," she says. "That's true in these really old holy texts, too."

SEE IT: Girls in Trouble plays Turn! Turn! Turn!, 8 NE Killingsworth St., with Cynthia Nelson and Sex and Insects, on Saturday, March 21. 8 pm. Free. 21+.

WWeek 2015