*R*E*V*I*E*W*S*
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Bikini Kill – Reject All American
Two word for
ya, babydoll; RIOT GRRL! Oh
yeah. Never mind learning the three
basic chords, just get out there and cause a riot. And they did for me. As
Kathleen Hanna screams and yelps her sweet way through this album, you know
that anything is possible. It’s like
Disney for femme freaks, full of ideas you should have heard a long time
ago. The music is good, sometimes
urgent, sometimes sublime, but the lyrics hit home harder than any guitar
ever could. RIP is the way it
feels to be a teenage girl, down to the screaming, “Don’t tell me it don’t
matter!” Seas of tiny
glitter-encrusted grrl fists are raised in agreement and support.
Riot Grrl
was/is often dismissed by critics as tuneless, as a load of hyped-up garage
bands full of women who spend too much time getting angry about the, like,
totally patriarchal society we live in, and should have spent this time
learning stuff like scales, and chord progressions. As always, they kinda missed the point. Riot Grrl was never about the music. It was just one medium they could use to
get the all-important message across (Bikini Kill started off as a fanzine,
then became Bikini Kill the band).
This album is just as good if you sit down and read the lyrics as if
you listen to it. Although the Kill have now split up, Kathleen Hanna is in a
new band, the fabulous Le Tigre, who are more electronic-based, but just as
kewl. Go listen to ‘em now!
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Track-listing
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1) Statement of Vindication
2) Capri Pants
3) Distinct Complicity
4) False Start
5) RIP
6) No Backrub
7) Bloody Ice Cream
8) For Only
9) Tony Randall
10) Reject All American
11) Finale
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Hole – Live Through This
Okay. Normally
I’m not the type that tries to dictate the music people should listen
to. But you should hear this album.
No, actually I take that back, you should own this album, build a shrine to it
in your home and worship the atom bomb of attitude, that is Courtney
Love. Saying it is good is like
saying the sun is a bit warm. From
the start/stop blistering rock of Violet, to the anthemic screams of Rock
Star, via the frankly lovely Doll Parts, the roaring Plump, and the
disturbing Jenifers Body, and everything in-between, I adore this album. Every girl should be presented with a copy
of this CD-shaped bible the minute they hit puberty, but instead they choose
to listen to the saccharine pop sap of Britney “Born to make you happy”
Spears. I cannot do this album
justice, nor explain what it really means to me. Is it possible to love an album? I think Live Through This would be a mean lover but I’d happily
have its children. I want to listen
to it for the rest of my life.
Live Through
This is what it really means to be a grrl in this world, a yelling screaming
raw obsessive glorious freak. And
amen to that.
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1) Violet
2) Miss World
3) Plump
4) Asking For It
5) Jenifers Body
6) Doll Parts
7) Credit In The Straight World
8) Softer. Softest
9) She Walks Over Me
10) I Think That I Would Die
11) Gutless
12) Rock Star
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Hole – My Body The Hand Grenade
This isn’t a
new album, but a collection of rarities and b-sides, selected by Hole
themselves. Most rarities albums are
quite disappointing, as it soon becomes apparent that the reason the tracks
are hard to find is that they were so crap that all copies were burned…but this
is different. More like a progressive
history of Hole’s music, I’d recommend it for both new virgin-like fans and
obsessed saddo’s who have everything Hole ever recorded anyway. It kicks bottom.
Containing the
first ever recording of the band, Turpentine, a song that fulfils Courtney
ambition to have a mixture of grindcore and girl groups. Although the recording isn’t fantastic,
there are already signs of greatness, waiting to emerge. If this came on the radio, you would stop
what you were doing and wonder what the hell is this? And where can I get more of it? But fear not, there’s lots more to
come. The album is worth buying solely
for the now-deleted Beautiful Son, and it’s sublime flipside 20 Years In The
Dakota (referring to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and their hide-away apartment
in the Dakota Building, New York). I
must confess, I don’t know why the track was deleted, although I suspect it
had something to do with Kurt. If
anybody knows, please email me, the address is in the INFO section of the
site.
This album
shows Hole from many angles, all of them flattering.
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1) Turpentine
2) Phonebill Song
3) Retard Girl
4) Burn Black
5) Dicknail
6) Beautiful Son
7) 20 Years In The Dakota
8) Miss World
9) Old Age
10) Softer, Softest (MTV Unplugged)
11) He Hit Me (MTV Unplugged)
12) Season Of The Witch (MTV Unplugged)
13) Drown Soda (Live)
14) Asking For It (Live)
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Nirvana – In Utero
This album was
Kurt Cobain’s final missive to the world Nirvana had conquered (“One more
special message to go then I can go home”), and what a message it
is. Kurt hammers the most beautiful
screams out of his tortured Strat, all the time with his middle finger
straight up at the record company.
During recording with producer Steve Albini (famous for his work with
hardcore sound), Nirvana booked into the studios under the name The Simon
Richie Group, after Sid Vicious’ pre-Pistols identity, and that really serves
as fair warning for what’s in-store.
Near-solid blocks of noise, like Spector drowning in a sea of
distortion-riddled sludge, this is grunge gone nasty, fulfilling the bands’
aim to produce a record as far away from Nevermind as possible. But it’s heart-breakingly beautiful
moments like All Apologies, Dumb, Pennyroyal Tea, and Gallons that make this
album. I shiver when I hear Kurt
sighing “I wish I had more time…more opportunities…so I wouldn’t have to…”
at the end of Gallons. There is an
odd air of forbidding knowledge over this album. Since Kurt’s tragic death, it is very difficult to listen to
this without scouring it for signs, clues, of what was to come, but that only
serves to make it more poignant.
More skilled than Bleach, more terrifying
than Nevermind, and full of the twisted paranoia of a man whose fame is
strangling his punk morality (“I do not want what I have got” - Radio
Friendly Unit Shifter). The real
Nirvana essential.
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1) Serve The Servants
2) Scentless Apprentice
3) Heart-Shaped Box
4) Rape Me
5) Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle
6) Dumb
7) Very Ape
8) Milk It
9) Pennyroyal Tea
10) Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
11) Tourette’s
12) All Apologies
13) Gallons Of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Though The
Strip
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Sleater-Kinney – All Hands On The Bad One
This is the
sound of the new riot. This reminds
me of something Courtney Love said when accused of selling out; “I have to
be pretty if I want to get over. And
I have to get over if I’m gonna screw the system up. And I’m gonna screw it up”. With this album, Sleater-Kinney have
obviously matured and come of age as a band, but the morals and mottos are as
poignant as ever. On #1 Must-Have,
they state their case in this post-Spice feminist generation (“Watch me
make up my mind instead of my face/And now I’m spending all my days at
girlpower.com, trying to buy back a little piece of me”), and I can feel
the familiar warmth coming back to me.
I think it’s called hope. That
Riot Grrl is not actually dead, it’s just been hiding, perfecting its
technique. Cuz the music on this is
fantastic. No-one ever sounds quite
like Sleater-Kinney, due to their unusual 2-guitarists-drums-no-bass formula,
but who needs a bass when you have two guitarists like Carrie Brownstein and
Corin Tucker? The sound weaves, as
the deep-layered melodies twist into each other like lovers. Although Carrie and Corin split up as a
couple a long time ago, their guitars are still in the perfect relationship.
It’s not all
gender politics (although Sleater-Kinney do that very well), as the lovely
Milkshake n’ Honey shows (“I’ve always been a guy with a sweet tooth/and
that girl was just like a king-sized candy bar”) and the media paranoia
of Was It A Lie, the story of a car crash on TV. I’ll leave the last word to the Sleater-Kinney girls themselves
– “It’s time for a new rock’n’roll age! And if you’re ready for more, I
might just be what you’re looking for”
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1) The Ballard Of A Ladyman
2) Ironclad
3) All Hands On The Bad One
4) Youth Decay
5) You’re No Rock n’ Roll Fun
6) #1 Must Have
7) The Professional
8) Was It A Lie
9) Male Model
10) Leave You Behind
11) Milkshake n’ Honey
12) Pompeii
13) The Swimmer
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Slipknot – Slipknot
Mention
Slipknot and the first thought is of the masks. Not of the incredible industrial drumming, or the
soul-splitting guitar, or the surprisingly intelligent lyrics, just the
masks. And in their appearance, the
‘Knot have found a bitter irony. The
masks were designed to take the focus away from appearances and towards the
sound, so why does everybody know what they look like and no one knows the
sound? It’s a shame because this is one of the best albums I’ve heard all
year.
With a grand
total of nine members, consisting of no less than three drummers (Shawn,
Joey, Chris), two guitarists (Mick, James), two dj’s/samplers (Sid, Craig),
only one bassist (Paul), and the gravel throated one known as Corey, it’s not
really surprising that Slipknot make one hell of a noise. Easy listening this ain’t. Nor is it suitable for background music,
or a party soundtrack, but what it is, is fantastic. The drumming hits you like the apocalypse,
whilst the guitars stab and drill into your conscious. But what people seem to miss, are the
tunes. No, that wasn’t a typing
mistake. There are tunes. And lyrics. There is music.
Slipknot aren’t as heavy as they’d have you believe (although maybe
that’s my hearing going, because my parents do not agree…). The lyrics are great, twisted and violent,
yet cynical and intelligent.
They usually
say it’s the quiet ones you have to watch.
But although Slipknot are better heard than seen, keep your eye on
them…
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1) 742617000027
2) (Sic)
3) Eyeless
4) Wait And Bleed
5) Surfacing
6) Spit It Out
7) Tattered & Torn
8) Me Inside
9) Liberate
10) Prosthetics
11) No Life
12) Diluted
13) Only One
14) Scissors
15) Get This
16) Interloper (Demo)
17) Despise (Demo)
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