BRATMOBILE
Ladies, Women & Girls (Lookout)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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Remember those great girl groups of the early 60s, how they'd hit those three part harmonies while lamenting lost love and you'd just get chills down your spine? Yeah, me too. Nothin' like Bratmobile at all, but I really liked 'em. Oh, but this is good, too.

This is Olympia, Washington's Bratmobile, three women who alternately hype me up, turn me on and scare the hell out of me. See, all good punk rock should do that, but it's easier to define when women are playin' it. Bratmobile have been at it since 1991, with a four year break just because. These three have gotten progressively better as players (a dangerous move in their circle that could have caused them to be labeled sellouts), and in fact Ladies, Women and Girls is loaded with spiff riffs and hot playing.

The fourteen songs cover topics ranging from anger to demanding your cheap trick record back from an ex-lover to anger to inability (or total lack of interest in trying) to commit to a monogomous relationship to anger... well, you get the point. It's mostly the "don't piss me off or I'll microwave your annoying, scrawny ass" kind of anger. Bratmobile's expressed it before, as have their closest genre-mates, Bikini kill and Lunachicks, but when it's done by the experts it never grows old, and that's certainly the case here.

It ends on a surprisingly serious note, however. "Girlfriends Don't Keep" seems to be a lament for loves lost that steps out of the wild college roving lesbian personas they still embody so well a decade down the line. It approaches gently, but definitely from an older and wiser place.

Hey... a lament for loves lost. So maybe there's a little link to those great girl groups of the 60s after all.

Okay, put me down, I said a LITTLE link.

Anyway, it's an interesting moment. As for the rest, it's a rockin', shakin', buckin', kickin' record, and if you get it on CD, just pretend it's a record and you'll be fine. (Mine's a CD. Shhhhhh.)

© 2001 - DJ Johnson