Pop culture treasure, high culture trash.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Painting pictures for the blind



Record recs!

A riot grrrl revival is tearing up the Twin Cities as we speak. Among the perpetrators are Baby Guts and Kitten Forever (above). Baby Guts see your Spiderfighter, raise you a rerecorded Pretty on the Inside that is actually listenable. Kitten Forever knit fat positivity, vitriol and Allison Wolfe-ian high irony (vocalisms, too--they end up somewhere between Bratmobile and Deep Lust). "This is a hostile takeover." Anti-nostalgia, non-capitulation. Feminist riotcore, grotty punk brilliance. Kitten Forever holler in "Keep It Up": This is what we need to do/take it back from those dudes. Laura Larson is the singer/guitarist for Baby Guts, the bassist for Kitten Forever, and yr new heroine. Kitten Forever have a cassette called "Sissy Party" and Baby Guts have the Pocketknife demo, as well as the Gasoline EP. City Pages has already caught on, so should you.

The new Mirah record could be the concept album coup of '07. It's all about entomology and uses words like "phloem" and "ecdysis" and "liquefaction" and "vociferous." The entire thing must have about 20,000 rhymed couplets in it (I lost count round about track 3). It sounds kind of like early Rasputina sometimes, being just vocal and cello and drums, though there is also accordion and oud. Rasputina have a new record coming out themselves on June 26th, which beats Mirah's release date by a week (hers is August 6th).

I love how Pink Flag still sounds like it was recorded yesterday. Or maybe it's just that everything coming out these days sounds like it was recorded in 1977. Hi-hat to beat the band and leave it for dead. If you listen to "Strange" with headphones on you get one side of the riff curling into each ear individually, so it's like having a twine-covered ping pong ball bouncing around inside yr skull, left lobe to right, right lobe to left. How Elastica ever worked up the guff to quote from "Three Girl Rhumba" in "Connection" the way they did is beyond thought.

3 comments:

boompoof said...

You should check out the vignettes. played a show with them a few weeks ago and they totally impressed me.

you're a friend of mairead's living in msp i think, i am stationed here as well. if we know it or not i'm sure our paths will cross at some point, perhaps at the finally punk / kitten forever show in a few weeks.

Lizzie Pogo said...

I am definitely a friend of the Mairead living in the MSP. And I am definitely planning on going to the Finally Punk/Kitten Forever show. I will be the one in pink, with pigtails. The smallest one in pink with pigtails.

What is yr band?

boompoof said...

no band really. i accompany my friend angie on the banjo sometimes.

you already have your outfit planned out. impressive. i'll be the one with a bejeweled anchor hanging from her rat-tail. classy i know.