Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cake, Iron & Wine, Meat Puppets, Blind Melon, Peaches, Neutral Milk Hotel, Lemon Demon and The Sugarcubes. While stylistically these bands are essentially alien to one another they do have one unifying quality. Bands named after food and drink have a long lineage. As a side note, I have a major beef with online lists of ‘100 Best Bands With Food Related Names’, and things of the sort that include, like, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Midnight Oil or Sweet. They’re not foods- stop trying to reach.
Enter here Lambrini Girls. Lambrini, the fruity pear cider popular in the UK, most certainly counts towards food and drink related band names. Actually, I have a second beef with ‘100 Best Bands With Food Related Names’, and things of the sort, as they do not include Lambrini Girls. Lambrini Girls are a UK punk band flying high off the release of their debut album, You’re Welcome, and quite recently, Iggy Pop’s new favourite band. Out of the basement and into, well, a slightly bigger basement. They are a punk band after all. You’re Welcome, released in May of this year on Big Scary Monsters, is the next logical evolution in punk.
There’s a tendency to see a title like ‘Boys in the Band’ and hear the growl of a distorted guitar and immediately slap a Riot Grrrl label on the contributory group. Lambrini Girls- are they feminist? Absolutely. Punk? Without a doubt. Does the label fit? Sure. But the group spans far past the genre as well. They’re feminists, they’re punks, they’re the future of a genre.
Droning guitar takes a hard edge on album opener ‘Boys in the Band’. Vocals reminiscent of Joe Talbot (IDLES) bear down on listeners with military precision and a delightful sneer. ‘Terf Wars’ features a trilling, almost mesmerising, bass line amplified by the searing condemnation layered on top of it. The band doesn’t beat around the bush as the chorus starts off with “You’re not a feminist/ You’re a stain on this earth”. With anti-trans rhetoric on the rise it’s encouraging to see rising punk bands like Lambrini Girls abandon apathy and take a hard stance on the matter. A bass line pulled so taut it sounds like it might snap introduces us to ‘Mr Lovebomb’. Halting instrumentals stud the verses while the chorus slams in at full volume. I may physically be in a Walmart McDonalds right now but spiritually I’m in a mosh pit in a dive bar in Brighton, England. ‘Lads Lads Lads’ takes aim at the toxic masculinity that’s often mistook for community and camaraderie amongst men. The drums sound 10 feet tall while the vocals reach, incredibly, higher- or at least louder. I would start pulling quotes but honestly the whole song is a master craft in brutal dissection (if dissections were done with petrol bombs instead of scalpels). Echoing vocals and snappy bass usher in a different sound on ‘Help Me I’m Gay’. The vocals burrow into the mix and let the bass and guitar shine. Album closer ‘White Van’ finds the band in usual fashion once again with heavy distortion and even heavier lyrics. A track that rages against catcalling, the band finds themselves at their catchiest with a chorus of “Roses are red/ Violets are blue/ But shouting out your white van won’t make me go home with you”. The EP wraps up with a fuzzed out wall of noise and almost inaudible vocals.
Queercore punk rock for the genuine and angry amongst us. It lends a more inclusive lens to the genre that’s sorely needed. While the EP doesn’t offer a ton of variety it does one thing very, very well. When that one thing is blistering punk it doesn’t matter how many guitar pedals or complex time signatures you have.
