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Review by Michael Mellor (music journalist)
It’s tempting to use Reviewer’s Algebra for this – “Lydia Lunch fronts The Birthday Party”, say – because, God’s Honest Truth, it’s the sound of the vagina dentata gnashing. Where so many female vocalists in Really Heavy Bands play on the contrast with whispers, drawls, or exaggerated girlishness, Sibyl Madrigal, a Texan performance poet, growls and snarls to match the post-punk / slowcore grind, making this a mixture of Swampland and Spiderland. That said, the opening salvo are explosive; Alex Ward’s chorus guitars on ‘Death on the NHS’ shriek like an incoming missile, before the verse guitars scrape metal on metal, PiL- or GO4-style. Taking a cue from Angela Carter, ‘Just Stephen’ puts the blood and guts back into fairy tales – it’s Psycho merged with “There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe”, soundtracked by Slint, but small details like the mad matriarch’s injunction against “big naughty bad” and Stephen’s “wibbley-wobbley dance” are what make this sound fresh. Next up, ‘Carpet Shark’ nails the sensation of a bad trip in two words and a creeping bassline. Throughout, Madrigal proves herself relentlessly inventive in her iconoclasm: ‘Mad MacB’s Love Lament’ drops the witchiness for a hideous falsetto, something like the deformed inner child of X-Factor contestants squealing for attention, or the song Lynch thought too horrible for the Lady in the Radiator to sing. We’ve already had one take on Bad Motherhood (‘Just Stephen’) but ‘Sow Souwester’ doesn’t even humanize this particular Earth Mother; over a freeform backing, Madrigal oinks and grunts the apotheosis of the sow-goddess. Finally, ‘We Come from Fish’ brings everything together: it’s a refutation of Creationism, a shamanic dive into the pre-conscious, a reclamation of hatewords. Plus, it rocks as hard as Slint, Shellac, Codeine, Come. 20 years ago, Kim Gordon deadpanned: “England didn’t invent punk-rock; girls did.” True, the girls of this decade’s post-punk revival have lasted longer than most, but God’s Mama point to the flaw: where are the older Women making punk? (written by Michael Mellor, Nov 2010)
THE FIRST CD IS NOW ON SALE AT RAY'S JAZZ, FOYLES (3RD FLOOR), CHARING X RD; ALSO AT SISTER RAY'S, BERWICK ST, LONDON.
WE ARE THE TIGHTEST, MIGHTIEST, STRANGEST, FUNNIEST BAND TO BEND THE ROCK WORLD IN YEARS, AT LEAST SINCE JANIS JOPLIN'S FIRST FURTIVE FUMBLINGS WITH PATTI SMITH.
GOD'S MAMA BLESSES YOU.
Read more: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gods-Mama/11138614871
- Genre
- Postpunk
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