This Week: Two girl groups and over-hyped British hip hop
The Donnas
Spend The Night (Atlantic Records)
If you were afraid that The Donnas might change up their style and sound for their major label debut, fear not.
Their Ramones meets AC/DC sound that has become their trademark is still definitely intact. Like their past albums, all the songs, with such titles as "Take Me to the Backseat" and "Take It Off," are all about boys, sex, partying or a combination of the three.
Lyrics like "I just had to tell all the boys that you'd rather have a Mai Tai/ Then a tall glass of Bud Dry" or "Well I must have had too many Diet Cokes/ 'Cause I'm laughing at all your jokes" may not change your world perspective but will have you singing along with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek.
In "I Don't Care (So There)," lead singer Donna A. a.k.a. Brett Anderson complains about not getting some action from a "high school yum yum" from none other than Knoxville. She goes on to say that it's fine with her because "there's better guys everywhere." (Donna, when you're in town, give me a call.)
Save your lighters for another band. You will not get any power ballads from the Donnas because they are total cock rock. (Can you call it "cock rock" if the band is all female? A better name for their type of music may be "I want some cock" rock.)
But as with a lot of bands in this genre, the songs start to blend together and sound alot alike. The "delinquent horny school girl" bubblegum hard rock starts to lose its flavor after awhile.
But when taken in small pieces, this album is worth sinking your teeth into.
—Brad Ridenour
Sahara Hotnights
Jennie Bomb (Jetset Records)
I've always been a sucker for women rockers. Call it a willing role reversal where the guy is the one at the foot of the stage with longing eyes, and the woman the one with the guitar basking in the attention and three chords.
So, how could I refuse an all-girl group from Sweden getting lots of hype in a trendy Scandinavian rock scene? Well, I couldn't. Their debut full-length, Jennie Bomb, is not something that will knock gender roles and music formulas on their asses, the way PJ Harvey, Sleater-Kinney or Bjork do. The band's website, www.saharahotnights.com, markets the group like they're the Monkees, telling you each member's favorite music and food (information that I gobbled up). It's the same old formula, with different characters, none of whom have bulges in their pants. But, at its heart Jennie Bomb is great, fun rock 'n' roll. The album opens with "Alright, Alright (Here's My Fist Where's The Fight?)," which has the girls proclaiming, "Your world is collapsing tonight/ I wanna make some noise," followed by the anthemic chant, "Alright, Alright."
On the next song they declare, "We can keep up the speed till we die," and that's pretty much what they do for the rest of the album. Vocally, the group falls somewhat flat. The lead vocals are handled jointly, and the choruses are usually chants. So the emphasis is on the guitars and drums and thankfully the playing is tight and convincing.
Their boast that they're redefining punk rock is hard to swallow, but Sahara Hotnights at least know what rock 'n' roll is and remind you of its visceral pleasures. If they blow into town, maybe I'll camp out near their van after the show.
—Joe Tarr
The Streets
Original Pirate Material (Vice/Atlantic)
Because he's white and working-class and he (kind of) raps, it's easy to tag Mike Skinner as the English Eminem. But Skinner —who is the sole member of The Streets—has more relevant antecedents. Imagine Gil Scott-Heron's beat poetry with a U.K. accent, backed by jungle and garage techno rather than jazz and funk. Or Tricky's trip-hop muttering minus the apocalyptic paranoia.
"But Tricky's apocalyptic paranoia is what made him interesting," you say. Well, yes. Nevertheless, Skinner is acclaimed a genius in his homeland, and the American press isn't far behind. The inflationary rhetoric not only sets him up for a backlash, it overwhelms the moderate pleasures of his music. Stinting on both melody and rhythm, he offers instead a likable persona and low-key narratives of disarmingly unambitious lives.
Skinner's chief project is the documentation of a marginal and muted proletarian existence. His songs are about sitting around, playing video games, getting stoned, hitting on girls, getting stoned some more, going to parties, and working boring jobs to pay for all of the above. He is a plain-spoken voice of a generation raised on cheap drugs, good dance music, and diminished expectations. He can certainly be funny (as in the pot vs. beer dialectic "The Irony of It All"), and he's smart enough to see the limitations of his lifestyle ("five years went by and I'm older...and the same piano loops over and over").�But there's precious little urgency here. This is a missive from the opiated masses. In his own way, Skinner's as astute an observer of his time as Scott-Heron was. His revolution not only won't be televised—it won't even get its ass off the couch.
—Jesse Fox Mayshark
November 20, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 47
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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