by Jonah Evans (@jonahinthesnow)
Understanding Lambrini Girls’ whole deal begins with reading the self-description on their Bandcamp page: “Imagine your nan is in the boot of your car with a croissant in her mouth and hears bikini kill for the first time. That could be you. It will never be us as we are not bikini kill, and we are not your nan. We are Lambrini Girls. Bon appetite [sic] xoxox.” It’s a hilarious image, and a thoughtful way of distinguishing differences while citing inspiration or correlation between the two bands. The song “Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill runs through Lambrini Girls veins, yes, but they are something else too. Under the band name on their Bandcamp the tagline reads, “Party Music For Gay Angry Sluts.” Lambrini Girls’ debut album, Who Let the Dogs Out, echoes that tagline, and establishes their unique identity as they weave oodles of anger, vulnerability, and satire altogether.
Who Let the Dogs Out opens with “Bad Apple” which finds bassist Lilly Macieira-Boşgelmez laying down a thick, distorted downbeat that hits one note multiple times in different spacings, sludgy and angry. Macieira-Boşgelmez brightens the tone only halfway through the verse as Phoebe Lunny sings before the low vibration of the bass returns. It's so dark yet it feels like being injected with adrenaline, invoking the spirit to smash something, anything, everything. Lunny amplifies this sensation with eye-watering lyrical dexterity, lambasting the institution of policing with potent lyrics. “Hang the pigs that hunt your daughters”, “badges/ guns/ owned by abusers”, “fatal harm to kids unarmed defended on the news”, and a long drawn-out inflected shout, “Officer, what seems to be the problem?” among others, presents a beautiful marriage between the instrumentation and lyricism of the band.
The album is succinctly relentless in its critique of all that is wrong in society. The second track, “Company Culture,” bangs hard with Lunny’s guitar hitting the downbeat in a poignant, agitated riff and her voice inflection oscillating, shifting, and helping shape the song's contours. “The glass ceiling ahead of me, so I’ll / take a backseat / smile and ignore / that my boss wants to fuck / me / the wandering eyes / at all times in / the office.” Within a blip of the song, less than ten seconds, Lunny’s lyrics paint a multitude of social dynamics and challenges that women face in company culture. The satire pops off at the end of the chorus, “My cold resting bitch face / when will I learn that men just do it better?” The song slows down temporarily after that, and Lunny screams, “Don’t touch me!” generating a sensation of hype. The stark contrast gives a sense of survival mode, before moving back into an explosion of anger. Lunny's guitar playing in this song raises the tension of the lyrics and sonically builds anxious sensation. It rocks so hard.
The same kind of energy exists in songs like “You’re Not From Around Here,” with gentrification as its subject. Similarly “Big Dick Energy,” takes, well, “BDE” on with an energetic pop-style song. Jumping up and down in your living room would be the appropriate response. On “Cuntology 101,” Lunny performs lyrical acrobatics around the ironies of being shoved into countless boxes because of how they present and what those expectations mean. “Cuntology 101,” is the last song on the album, and I’d say it’s a love song to the self. The song is so funny and so fun—a perfect contrast to the seriousness of the band and all the things they purposefully and intentionally stand for.
There is a great sense of humility and vulnerability in the lyrics of “Special Different,” (where the guitar is disgustingly amazing and where the sense of escalation is an imminent feeling), “Nothing Tastes As Good as It Feels” (a gut punch of self-reflection), and particularly “Love”. On “Love,” one verse is, “True love is nothing more than the wrong hill to die on / Psychoanalyse my attachment styles and cross every boundary at once.” In the bridge of “Nothing Tastes as Good as it Feels,” Lunny sings, “As my head hits the / rim of the toilet lid / Kate Moss gives no / fucks that my period / has stopped / Wish I was skinny, but / I’ll never be enough.” This vulnerability paired with their effervescence and humor creates a harmonic balance on the record. Everybody feels anger about so many things in the world, and while many people have countless insecurities, we all can live with these things simultaneously on a daily basis. Lambrini Girls have not only called out other people, they have also called out themselves in a sense.
The tone of this record is certainly guided by Macieira-Boşgelmez’s bass playing. For the poppier songs, she pulls back the dark tones, but for the rest, she’s unrelenting, like a truck revving up, readying to floor it. She gives the album a strong base, something anticipatory and exciting. Jack Looker provides a dynamic canvas of drums that mesh perfectly with the identity of the band. The rage of Lunny’s voice codifies the identity of the band, and her lyricism is unmatched. Lunny’s guitar playing is so refined, and quite diverse, that sometimes it’s easy to miss because the lyrics are so captivating. But if you listen to her guitar close enough, your ears will bleed in the best kind of way.
Who Let the Dogs Out is an exceptionally cohesive album that’s high octane, head-banging, with a swath of self-humility and social criticism. It’s lyrically stunning and sonically commanding. It’s blazing, powerful, agitated, inspiring, relentless, and it’s a feast of music. Bon “appetite” xoxox!