Skinny Girl Diet are back for the bands second album and this time they are stripped even further back to a duo of sisters Delilah and Ursula Holliday as the bands erstwhile Bass Monster Amelia Cutler has I guess gone to university or something similar as they are still in their Teens or very early twenties. The new album is a suitable follow up to Heavy Flow and is every bit as angry and lo-fi as its predecessor.
It's amazingly 7 years since I first came across the band opening for The Nightingales at the Water Rats and it's great that the band have kept to the blueprint of lo-fi angry girl rock and no, they don't like being described as Punk or Riot Grrrl as I have done in the past, they probably don't like rock either.
From the opening of La Sirena that sounds like a lost L7 song with great stripped back drums and bass heavy guitar they bring the pain to one of the objects of the bands current anger and bile. Witch Of The Waste maybe about the old market in Hackney of that name and the characters they find there, it certainly has the feel of an argument between a couple of them, even if I stopped working on the Waste at the start of the 1980's the place hasn't changed that much since then even if the surrounding areas have been transformed.
Shed Your Skin has sparse and still angry guitars and drums as Ursula sings about how Unique they are as it's also a plea to not assume that someone is defined by the colour of their skin with bursts of squalling guitars accentuating her points of view a compelling howl at the madness of our society. Ideal Woman maybe the bands big anthem as they sing about making sure never to mould themselves into being Ideal Women with an irresistible sing along chorus that should go down a treat live.
Human Zoo starts with a slow scowl with small explosions of squalling noises to punctuate Ursula's advice to make sure you remain yourself in the Human Zoo we are living in. Side A closes with Starfucker an angry barb filled rant at the idiots that only have eyes to be the Starfucker and making them the object of pity for having no self-worth a great dash of powerful angst that is as much about the reality tv generation as the old school groupies it would once have been about.
The B Side opens with Western Civilisation that isn't some 10 minutes monumental epic metal song about the decline and fall but rather the band are asking the obvious question of the moment living in a collapsing democracy like the UK of how are we going to make society work better, not with more luxury apartments that's for sure and they punctuate the questions and ideas with cool nasty sounding guitars.
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Outsider is the song that most sounds exactly like they did the first time I saw them as before re-reading that review earlier I'd already noted how this song sounds like a cross between The Voodoo Queens and Mambo Taxi which is how I described them the first time I heard them play the sort of angry independent women's rock sorry for my old bloke terminology here that just sounds great.
Timing is another slow song with some rather angry brash guitar interjections but just don't whatever you do tell them how you feel. Golden has a nice laid-back start before the anger explodes and then recedes like it's being used as a weapon as they wonder why everyone wants a Golden Shower apparently, they keep getting asked, ah what a wonderful world.
Warrior Queens has a low slung sludge metal feel to it as they tell us just who is in control and trust me I'm not about to argue with them, they are the Warrior Queens after all. Not before time they dish out some of there envy and hatred of White Man or blokes like me who happen to be white and because of that get all sorts of privilege that lets face it we don't remotely deserve, and dealing with how your treated as a young black or mixed race or brown or any other colour but white man or woman, with great crushing harsh repeating guitar stabs.
They close the album with Clickbait that's a clattering maul of a song raging at the idiots whose life revolves around making themselves Clickbait rather than going out and doing real stuff to turn themselves into cool teenagers. It's as sharp witted lyrically as the rest of the album and I really hope the bands generation do rise up led by people like Skinny Girl Diet.
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