Babes In Toyland: Minneapolism

BABES IN TOYLAND: MINNEAPOLISM (2001)

1) Bruise Violet; 2) Swamp Pussy; 3) Vomit Heart; 4) Oh Yeah!; 5) Handsome And Gretel; 6) Won't Tell; 7) Drivin'; 8) Ripe; 9) Dust Cake Boy; 10) Ariel; 11) Bluebell; 12) He's My Thing; 13) Middle Man; 14) Memory; 15) Spun; 16) Spit To See The Shine; 17) Sweet '69.

This is not one of the many archive live releases from the vaults of the Toyland, but actually a contemporary memento of the Babes' last ever public appearance, after a few years of disin­tegrating, reconfiguring, patching up, and breaking down again, the Babes finally played their last show, with Bjelland, Barbero, and new bass player Jessie Farmer (who had actually replaced Maureen Herman in 1997). Details are obscure: reprinted sources claim that the show took place on November 21, 2001, yet at the same time the release date for the album is usually given as May 2001, so either we have some time travel involved here or some anonymous son of a bitch is falsifying history. Not that this particular history is of any tremendous importance, but accuracy is important even when dealing with a band as chaotic as the Babes.

Anyway, even though Minneapolism is primarily a historical document, it could have plenty of potential to become a great live record and, come to think of it, a much better farewell than the stupefied Nemesisters. Alas, nobody happened to care about sound quality — the whole thing honestly sounds like an audience-quality bootleg, albeit recorded from the first row, so all the drun­ken guffawing and hullabalooing mainly come through during the breaks between songs. Audiophiles will put this down ten seconds into the album and never pick it up again; lo-fi enthu­siasts and Kat Bjelland suitors are the only ones likely enough to want to keep it.

Too bad, because the show was really good. The new bass girl handles all of Michelle Leon's and Maureen Herman's tough parts fairly well, and Bjelland, despite occasional faltering and not al­ways being able to sustain the heat, still has enough spirit to whip herself up into the usual frenzy (something that you do not always expect out of «last concerts»). She seems a little out of breath on ʽHandsome And Gretelʼ (even letting the audience sing a couple of the "handsooooome!"s in­stead of herself), and misses a few of the «scream-shots» on ʽDust Cake Boyʼ — but apparently, there had always been slips like these whenever the Babes performed live, so there is no need to tie the occasional mistakes in with disillusionment, tiredness, or lack of enthusiasm.

The setlist, on the other hand, is near-perfect — all the classic numbers are here, with a nice fat selection from Spanking Machine, all the big «hits» from Fontanelle, and a slightly higher than necessary, but not fatal selection from Nemesisters (the weirdest inclusion is ʽDrivin'ʼ, on which Barbero is forced to chant her mantra of "where were you, I thought that I knew" for three mi­nutes without any echo or reverb on her voice — not a pleasant experience, particularly to hear her get so totally out of breath towards the end). Main focus is on kicking ass — the «moody» numbers are reduced to a minimum and act as occasional breathers (ʽWon't Tellʼ, ʽMiddle Manʼ), helping Bjelland to regain some stamina for the next monster rocker. Altogether, I think the audi­ences got what they wanted — if only somebody had bothered setting up a proper recording con­sole, us future listeners could get what we want, too, but no dice.

Consequently, do not hunt for this without extra necessity; ʽFontanelletteʼ on Painkillers is a sharper illustration of the girls' club power, although, of course, it is exclusively limited to pro­mo­ting Fontanelle, and The Peel Sessions have far better sound quality, although they are not genuinely «live» (not before a genuinely vibrant club audience, that is) and are also represented by a somewhat questionable setlist. Which, in the end, leaves us still wishing and hoping for that one perfect Babes In Toyland live experience where it would all come together — the clarity of the mix, the enthusiasm, the song quality — and it looks like that particular wish just ain't coming true, unless the ladies give it one more try one of these days.

Babes In Toyland: The BBC John Peel Sessions 1990-1992

BABES IN TOYLAND: THE BBC JOHN PEEL SESSIONS 1990-1992 (2001)

1) Catatonic; 2) Ripe; 3) Primus; 4) Spit To See The Shine; 5) Pearl; 6) Dogg; 7) Laugh My Head Off; 8) Mad Pilot; 9) Handsome & Gretel; 10) Blood; 11) Mother; 12) Dirty; 13) Jungle Train; 14) Right Now; 15) Sometimes; 16) Magick Flute.

For a band that only lasted for half a decade, releasing but three spotty LPs and leaving behind a rather ambiguous reputation, Babes In Toyland have a rather inadequate slew of «posthumous» archive releases and compilations — including, among other things, a trilogy of live compilations creatively called Devil, Lived, and Viled, published in 2000 by some obscure indie label or other. (Only mentioning these because there is no way I am ever going to review that many live albums from this kind of band — I can only guess that one of the label executives simply had a major crush on Kat Bjelland, which may be understood).

In any case, only a small part of this backlog is easily available these days. One of the earliest and most important is this set of live performances recorded for John Peel, who was a major fan of Spanking Machine and did much to promote the band in the early stages of their career. In fact, the original Peel Sessions, a brief EP with only eight tracks, was released as early as 1992; this here edition from 2001 is an expanded version that adds material from a couple of later sessions, the last one already with Maureen Herman replacing Michelle Leon on bass. Given John Peel's popularity and importance, this is quite likely the way that many Euro­pean audiences heard the band in the first place — so, at the very least, The Peel Sessions have some historical importance. And at most, they are kinda fun.

Could have actually been much more fun, though, if not for the questionable track list: apparently, the idea behind this BBC exposure was primarily to promote the latest and freshest, and this means that (a) there is virtually no material from their first and best, Spanking Machine, except, of course, for the one worst song on that album (ʽDoggʼ); (b) the performances of songs from To Mother and Fontanelle are, in general, quite close to the studio originals, with no time to re­hearse any variations. In fact, the track lengths are so eerily close to the respective lengths for the studio versions that I had to doublecheck whether this could be some sort of ruse — but no, these are indeed alternate takes. In fact, for those who dislike their Babes wrapped in studio echo, these versions might seem preferable — guitars and vocals slap you in the face on an «immediate» le­vel, without having to break through any further mixing conventions.

Only two songs out of sixteen are unavailable elsewhere: ʽDirtyʼ, memorable for being based on the riff of ʽHey Bulldogʼ transposed for grunge guitar (no great fun in any other respect), and ʽSometimesʼ, built on a swift descending pattern similar to ʽRipeʼ, but disappointingly sagging in the slowed-down bridge parts. Both qualify as standard-fare, listenable Fontanelle-era songs, but not as trademark solid examples of the «Bjelland hysterics».

One must keep in mind that 99% of whatever the Babes recorded live, they recorded in shoddy lo-fi quality, be it a local club gig or a major festival appearance, so if you are really interested in assessing their tightness as a live unit, this is your best bet, and they were pretty tight whenever they paid attention to it — the fifteen-second intro to ʽSometimesʼ, for instance, should alone be sufficient to dispel any rumors of Bjelland's unprofessionalism and anti-musicality: I'm sure Pete Townshend would have loved that chuggy descending riff and the subtle chord variations on each bar. The downside to this fine sound quality is that you also get to hear Lori Barbero's vocals on ʽDoggʼ in all of their unbridled ugliness, but nothing comes without a price, I guess.  

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Babes In Toyland: Nemesisters

BABES IN TOYLAND: NEMESISTERS (1995)

1) Hello; 2) Oh Yeah!; 3) Drivin'; 4) Sweet '69; 5) Surd; 6) 22; 7) Ariel; 8) Killer On The Road; 9) Middle Man; 10) Memory; 11) S.F.W.; 12) All By Myself; 13) Deep Song; 14) We Are Family.

By 1995, Babes In Toyland had nothing much left to say — which should come as no surprise for those who think they had nothing to say in the first place, and as a piece of sad news for those who think the band did have growth potential. But in what direction? They never wrote great me­lodies, they were sloppy instrumentalists, and their inventiveness in the studio never took them beyond simple echo effects and extra fuzz. So where to now, St. Peter?

To a slow, boring, painfully drawn out failure, that's where. The album title is a funny haplology, the album cover looks like something right out of the hair metal years (Ozzy must have loved it), but the music, for the most part, is as dull as the opening track — ʽHelloʼ is an uneducated Sonic Youth parody, and any respect I have for the scenic image of Kat Bjelland is severely undercut by her trying to introduce «atmospherics», «subtlety», and «modern rock intellectualism» into the picture. What she can do is rev us up by screaming and roaring at the top of her lungs while chug­ging out simple, fast-moving grunge riffs. And on Nemesisters, the longest of all Babes albums, there are only two songs that move in that direction — ʽOh Yeah!ʼ and ʽSweet '69ʼ — and only ʽSweet '69ʼ moves far enough, with a Stooges-derived riff as generic as they come, but it is the crunch that matters, not the chords.

Most of the other songs just drone along — sometimes with a psychedelic effect (ʽSurdʼ), some­times bordering on stoner metal (ʽDrivin'ʼ, essentially a repetitive instrumental with a «sublimi­nal message» in the background), sometimes trying to experiment with tricky time signatures (Lori Barbero goes for some unusual polyrhythms on ʽMemoryʼ — not that it matters much), but these are nuances: the band is so inexperienced in all these matters anyway that it all merges together in one big bowl of tiresome slop.

If the bulk of the album does not spell out «f-a-i-l-u-r-e» clearly enough for you, the final three tracks will have to do the job: three «deconstructivist» covers of songs that one might only asso­ciate with the usual likes of Babes In Toyland in a nightmare: Eric Carmen's sentimental ballad ʽAll By Myselfʼ, the old vocal jazz chestnut ʽDeep Songʼ (Billie Holiday, etc.), and the old Sister Sledge disco anthem ʽWe Are Familyʼ. The ballad, drowned in a sea of fuzzy power chords and deep-throaty roar, is unlistenable (not that it was all that listenable in its original version, but this rendition does not even have the stark novelty value of a Sid Vicious doing ʽMy Wayʼ). The jazz number is sung by Lori Barbero (who cannot sing) a cappella (so that you wouldn't have the slightest doubt that she cannot sing); I will refrain from describing the aural consequences.

Only the Sister Sledge cover, with a funny electric piano part distilling the guitar noise, manages to be modestly entertaining — ironic as it is to hear them all joining in a chorus of "we are family, I got all my sisters with me", considering how much time was left for the band to live — but it may simply sound refreshing and relaxing after the aural horrors we have just had to experience. Besides, it is impossible to get the point of having it here without knowing about the original — and if you care at all for the original (which was, after all, one of the high points of «B-level dis­co» back in the day), there is no reason to care about the «deconstruction».

Basically, you can almost see the album talk back at the ladies — telling them to pack it in and call it a day, because they have ran out of gas to create another Spanking Machine, and the tank ain't strong enough to hold higher quality fuel. For instructive purposes, Nemesisters may be worth a listen, but it is more likely that Kat Bjelland will go down in history as the breathtaking, hysterical, aggressive little blonde banshee of ʽHe's My Thingʼ than as the scruffy, capricious, annoying ghostly zombie of ʽHelloʼ or ʽSurdʼ. Not to mention that she is a heck of a lot more en­tertaining and amusing as the former than as the latter. Thumbs down — as the Babes say their goodbyes to Toyland and move out to Adult Droneland, I'd rather prefer to stay behind.

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Babes In Toyland: Painkillers

BABES IN TOYLAND: PAINKILLERS (1993)

1) He's My Thing; 2) Laredo; 3) Istigkeit; 4) Ragweed; 5) Angel Hair; 6) Fontanellette.

The album cover explicitly suggests some trashy immediate link to Fontanelle, which there is: no­minally, this is an EP consisting of outtakes from the Fontanelle sessions (so the two relate to each other just like Spanking Machine related To Mother, pardon the involuntary rhyming), ex­cept that they also tack on a mini-live session — ʽFontanelletteʼ, recorded at CBGB's in April 1992, contains ten selections from Fontanelle squeezed inside one 34-minute track on the CD. Altogether, that makes up for a 50-minute listening experience, so the real meaning of the «EP» tag in this particular case is «Extra Pay» (for something quite superfluous).

The «original outtakes» are a rather confused bunch. There is a re-recording of ʽHe's My Thingʼ with somewhat better production than on the original, and with the same wildness level, but with­out any particularly reasonable point. There is ʽLaredoʼ, a fairly punchy riff-rocker with a fun «surf-grunge» lead line throughout; it could have made a good addition to Fontanelle, replacing one of its slower, more boring numbers. ʽIstigkeitʼ, however, is one of those slow, boring num­bers, whose ethereal falsetto harmonies are just enough out of tune to confirm that Bjelland should firmly stick to roaring, never «cooing». ʽAngel Hairʼ is a bunch of unmemorable noise, as uninspired and generic as they come.

Biggest surprise of the bunch is the obligatory Lori Barbero vocal spotlight — as usual, I was prepared for the worst, but ʽRagweedʼ is actually a surprise: alternating broken strings of notes and percussion blasts, over which Barbero, beatnik-style, flings brief recited sequences of words, followed by a fast-paced psychedelic section with buzzing intertwined guitars and a femme-fatale style, icy chorus. Throughout, Lori does not even try to sing, and it works — her spoken-word  «domina­trix» tone is far more convincing that way. Consequently, ʽRagweedʼ vies for attention with ʽLaredoʼ, first time in Barbero history.

The live performance boasts decent-quality recording and, since the songs are all fresh, genuine excitement at being able to donate the vibe to a small, hip New York crowd. But since the Babes never really hold it off in the studio, there is not much hope to see them get even wilder live — and meticulous comparison of the studio Fontanelle with the live ʽFontanelletteʼ is a sport that should be restricted only for the most loyal admirers of Kat Bjelland. At least they have the good sense not to play ʽQuiet Roomʼ — the live set omits most of the «moody» numbers, concentra­ting on rip-roar. And considering that the Babes would never have that much rip-roar again, it might seem nice to have this extra souvenir.

Babes In Toyland: Fontanelle

BABES IN TOYLAND: FONTANELLE (1992)

1) Bruise Violet; 2) Right Now; 3) Bluebell; 4) Handsome & Gretel; 5) Blood; 6) Magick Flute; 7) Won't Tell; 8) Quiet Room; 9) Spun; 10) Short Song; 11) Jungle Train; 12) Pearl; 13) Real Eyes; 14) Mother; 15) Gone.

In general, this is To Mother expanded to full-LP status. Despite an important lineup change — important, because any change in a three-person lineup will be important, even if the third person is confined to dancing and tambourines — namely, the replacement of bassist Michelle Leon with Maureen Herman, Fontanelle continues the band's «Journey Into The Depths of Your Sexual Subconscious», under the ongoing mentorship of Sonic Youth (whose own Lee Ranaldo co-pro­duced the album with Bjelland).

Somehow the album managed to become their commercial peak — most likely, due to (a) heavy promotion on the part of Sonic Youth and on the part of themselves, with the band's wild, but no­vel stage act steadily gaining in prominence; (b) most importantly, the overall grunge craze — in the wake of Nevermind, this sound was bound to succeed, especially considering that Bjelland's guitar tones are now even fatter, crunchier, and dirtier than they were two years before. That «swamp pussy» sound of Spanking Machine is all but gone, replaced by the punk-o-metal doom growl that Kurt commanded us to love — and we (the people) loved it so much we ended up buy­ing 220,000 copies of Fontanelle in the United States alone.

And what now, in retrospect? Well, naturally, the seams are showing — whatever emotional ef­fect the album may produce on us, the reasons for that effect are immediately obvious, canceling out the desirable «creepy» vibe. Even a brief comparison of the album sleeves between 1990 and 1992 shows the unhealthy difference: from a stylish, subtly defiant photo they switched to a ra­ther dubious «Chucky-meets-Alice-Cooper» trashy aesthetics. Then there is the same thing within the album sleeve: confused quasi-Freudian imagery in the lyrics + dark, quasi-gothic guitar tones with more emphasis on how the chords are played rather than on which chords are played = a tho­roughly unnecessary pretense to «intellectualism» where, earlier, there was just some simple, brutal, basic, gut-level exorcism.

However, that does not mean that Fontanelle is bad — it is a firm step in a wrong direction, as far as I am concerned, but it retains enough primal punch to be consistently listenable for those who respect primal punch punched by professional primal punchers. For sure, it was wrong of them to re-record the instrumental ʽQuiet Roomʼ from To Mother (its three minutes should, at best, have been reduced to a twenty-second mood-setting intro to some other song); and the final ʽGoneʼ, with its slow tempos, feedback walls, and «atmospheric» or «symbolic» overdubs of breaking glass at the beginning, is understandable as a choice for the lead-out track, but pretty much unbearable on its own (once again — such experiments should better be left for Sonic Youth; it's not that they do them a whole lot better, but at least «it's their life», whereas Bjelland is just an uncomfortable stranger to this land).

And yet, when Fontanelle rocks, it really rocks. The sonic textures may be even more monoto­nous than they used to, the melodic hooks may be completely disregarded (intentionally disrega­r­ded — since the melodies here are influenced by avantgarde rather than minimalistic, but catchy garage-rock), but they still get by on the strength of Bjelland's personality. One of my favorite numbers here, ʽHandsome & Gretelʼ, managed to become a favorite simply because of the hila­rious vocal modulation, which includes everything from deep-throat roar to mock-falsetto irony — if anything, that is at least serious theatrical skill. ʽBruise Violetʼ is a great album opener, jackhammering the song's maligned victim (some suggested that the victim in question was Court­ney Love, which Bjelland naturally denied in public, in the light of lines like "you fucking bitch I hope your insides rot", etc.) into oblivion, with a few well-placed echoey calls of «liar, liar, liar!» diversifying the mood — now you're playful, now you're vengeful, and now you're down­right psychotic. This is something that needs a Kat Bjelland for comfort; nobody in Sonic Youth possessed that sort of back alley devil inside them.

In short, to sum it all up in a transparent hyperbolic manner, you probably haven't lived your life to the fullest if you never heard Kat scream out "YOU'RE DEAD MEAT MOTHERFUCKER YOU DON'T TRY TO RAPE A GODDESS" at the top of her lungs during the climax to ʽBlue­bellʼ — this ain't «music», really, more like «spiritual history», but it's the little things like that which make Fontanelle an important, and quite exciting, document of its epoch. Even the obli­gatory Lori Barbero vocal spotlight this time is tolerable, as the lady is playing Patti Smith's little sister on the tempo-varying ʽMagick Fluteʼ.

Additionally, I refrain from making any definitive comments on the actual music content here, because this would require more trained and attentive ears — I don't «get» these melodies as dis­tinct entities in their own rights, but somebody else might: this is not generic hardcore or poorly masked formulaic blues-rock, with at least some of the guitar / bass interplay quite carefully con­structed and occasionally steered in the «punk jazz» department of Primus and the like. Not that the girls are seriously / notably growing as technically skilled players or anything — the only point is that there may be more to this music than what immediately meets, and blackens, the naked eye. From that point of view, my thumbs up come both as overdue payment for Bjelland's fiery spirit — and possible advance payment for potential future revelations.

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Babes In Toyland: To Mother

BABES IN TOYLAND: TO MOTHER (1991)

1) Catatonic; 2) Mad Pilot; 3) Primus; 4) Laugh My Head Off; 5) Spit To See The Shine; 6) Ripe; 7) The Quiet Room.

A 22-minute long EP here, worth a brief separate review not only because it is almost as long as an early Beach Boys album, but also because it is a relatively important «evolutionary step» from Spanking Machine to Fontanelle. The songs are allegedly all outtakes from the Spanking Ma­chine sessions, but they were re-recorded in the wake of the Babes' joint European tour with Sonic Youth, and some additional influence might be discernible — not a very good influence, I'm afraid, but one that guides the band into a denser jungle of subconscious libidinous metaphors and into exploring distorted noise from an «artsy» standpoint rather than just using it as a direct reflection of being pissed off.

Which is all right for Sonic Youth, I guess — these guys started out with just such an agenda, and gradually got better and better at it — but a little out of the league of Kat Bjelland and her assis­tants. Maybe she can write lyrics that are on par with Sonic Youth (it doesn't take a rocket scien­tist to master that style), but trying to put a «depth-and-subtlety» sheen over the one and only thing that Babes In Toyland do real good — waging post-pubescent hysteria — is an inadequate decision, to say the least. Particularly if it translates into the presence of boring arpeggiated ins­trumentals (ʽThe Quiet Roomʼ, sounding like a mediocre San Franciscan band transplanted into the 1990s), or into letting the drummer girl take another abysmal lead vocal (ʽPrimusʼ) even after the misfortune of ʽDoggʼ clearly showed the insanity of the idea.

There are two songs here still firmly rooted in the «old» style — loud, aggressive, demonic, hy­sterical. ʽMad Pilotʼ is somewhat spoiled by excessive reverb on some of the vo­cals, but the main brutal, simplistic riff makes up for it, and the overdubbed guitar noises actually make sense, imi­tating an airplane out of control, a fairly suitable image for the band. Even more «traditional» is ʽRipeʼ, with (almost) no overdubs, great screechy vocals and total delirium all around.

On the other hand, ʽCatatonicʼ is already erasing the distinctions between early Babes and early Hole, introducing elements of «doom-and-gloom» that may not be totally healthy — in fact, let the virus spread a bit and watch a normal person transform into a Lizard King. To look at it from a different side, when the opening lines to your album go "I know the sugar plum fairy / Her name is Mary / She's halfway inside my arm / Half way does great harm", this is a notably diffe­rent story from "Why do you make me feel so bad? / Why do you bother to act so sad?". And the difference in the music is quite comparable as well — minor tonalities, somber dirge moods, zombie atmospherics. I don't really want this from Bjelland.

That said, this is only the beginning of the change. Even ʽCatatonicʼ eventually picks up steam, and ʽLaugh My Head Offʼ gallops along to a hilarious chorus (with echoes of Siouxsie & The Banshees rather than Sonic Youth this time), so the only genuine turds on the EP are the two tracks mentioned at the beginning — the major problem is the length, making it a rather resource-ineffective proposition to go hunting for the EP.

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Babes In Toyland: Spanking Machine

BABES IN TOYLAND: SPANKING MACHINE (1990)

1) Swamp Pussy; 2) He's My Thing; 3) Vomit Heart; 4) Never; 5) Boto(w)rap; 6) Dogg; 7) Pain In My Heart; 8) Lashes; 9) You're Right; 10) Dust Cake Boy; 11) Fork Down Throat.

Technically speaking, Babes In Toyland are not directly related to the «Riot Grrrl» thing — even though Kat Bjelland was originally from Oregon (what's up with those Northwestern states and dirt-rock anyway? is that simply the farthest corner where the wind ends up blowing all the «white trash», or what?). But the band itself started up in Minneapolis, around 1987, deeply up­setting the local frigid Scandinavian population — so, eventually, they just had to move to Seattle — and, more importantly, they did not have much of a political agenda. Which is not a bad thing, perhaps, when you are playing this particular kind of music.

In terms of popularity, they ended up losing to their chief competition — Hole (much to the leery delight of Courtney Love, I suppose, as she had actually been a «Babe In Toyland» herself in 1987, playing bass for a few weeks before being kicked out by Kat). The loss, however, was clear­ly the result of Courtney's scandalous publicity rather than the music: in most of the areas where the basic sounds of Hole and Babes In Toyland actually differ, despite all the similarities, the latter win out, hands down.

The band is essentially the brainchild of Kat Bjelland — drummer Lori Barbero and bassist Mi­chelle Leon are faithful henchgirls, combining sincere energy with enough technical ability to not let it all fall apart — and Bjelland's religious dedication to punk aesthetics prevents her from be­coming too much of a musician, even though it occasionally does seem to matter to her which particular chord should be chosen next. Their instrumental limitations do not allow to properly qualify the music as «grunge» à la Nirvana — they cannot generate the necessary density and heaviness, and come across more like an untrained, undisciplined, wilder version of Sonic Youth: their trashy, heavily drunk younger sisters or something. (Thurston Moore actually appreciated the unexpected kinship and had the band tour together with Sonic Youth in 1990).

Nevertheless, Bjelland herself has a certain rough, murderous charm (as opposed to the rather sick, poisonous charm of Courtney Love). In public, that charm was mainly due to the contrast between the «kinderwhore» image and the ferocious-hysterical vocals, making her one of the top contenders for «best wild screamer» of the decade. But even on record, without the fancy dresses and the bleached hairlocks (or is that natural blonde? who cares, though?), she comes out exactly the way she is supposed to come up — midway in between «tough street punk kid» and «rotten spoiled princess brat». Which means that the listener's emotions may easily roll between scared admiration and annoyed irritation, and the latter is a much stronger emotion than sheer boredom and indifference, which would be the worst outcome.

Most of the songs sound more or less the same — mid-tempo aggregations of post-punk distorted chords that cluster in rhythmic phrases as if against their will, and use every chance they get to dissolve in puddles of noise. But the guitar tones are genuinely nasty, and even if most of their song titles are quite suggestive, the honor of living up to the 100-point mark unquestionably be­longs to ʽSwamp Pussyʼ, because the song totally sounds like a «swamp pussy» — the guitar provides the swamp, and the vocals provide the... well, you know. (Allegedly, the whole album was to be titled Swamp Pussy, but apparently somebody chickened out at the last moment — never mind, though, Spanking Machine is fairly indicative as well). The first 25 seconds of the song, opening the album, are so indicative of everything that follows that it might be all the time you need to decide if you include falling in love with this band in your immediate plans, or post­pone it until your nearest lobotomy.

Kat Bjelland cannot sing — she makes Patti Smith look like Maria Callas in comparison — but she can conjure a mean little devil, and, more importantly, get him under her total control: she is a highly expressive and technical screamer, knowing full well where to rise and where to fall, and how to even make it sound natural. That opening "why do you make me feel so bad? why do you bother to act so sad?" is a classic example of «primal scream» — something deeply repressed for a long, long time finally coming out — and, furthermore, as much as I hate to admit it, it is sexy, perhaps even to orgasmic heights.

Most of the songs, as can be easily told, are about girl-guy re­lationships, where males are some­times objectified ("he's my thing, stay away from my thing, get your own one around!"), some­times humiliated ("why did you leave me when I was still inside of you?" — somebody needs anatomy lessons, Kat), sometimes adored and despised at the same time ("I do hate you, vomit my heart, pull my legs apart... but I still love you, my brain's a car­nival all aflame"). But if you do not pay much attention to the lyrics, there is no impression that this exorcism is really directed at anybody or any group in particular. This is just an exercise in blunt frustration-venting with an implied sexual motivation — and it succeeds.

Actually, after a couple listens, driven mainly by intrigue, you start to discern patches of melody and musical creativity — for instance, the band's first single, ʽDust Cake Boyʼ, is initially memo­rable only because of the way Kat screams out the retriplicated last syllable of each verse line, but then you might get to like the «galloping» punch of the rhythm section and how it keeps dipping in and out of the power chord mess that attenuates Kat's screaming. Or that ʽHe's My Thingʼ is actually not a bad example of primitive, but catchy garage-rock composing. (Come to think of it, one totally obvious influence I have not mentioned is the Stooges' Fun House — very similar in a miriad of ways, even if there is really no way these well-meaning babes could match the inten­sity of Iggy's hell flames. But on both albums, the scorched, smelly stumps of good melodies require taking some time to stand out through the smoke).

The album falters only once, but rather badly: for the slow-tempo, dirge-like ʽDoggʼ, the «honor» of singing lead vocals is ceded to drummer Lori Barbero — and she has this nasal, whiny tone that does not fit the general atmosphere at all. Just like Kat, she cannot sing properly, but neither can she scream — the result is a rather dreary, totally un-fun-like interlude, and, furthermore, the album's sequencing really sucks in the middle, with ʽDoggʼ being immediately followed by the equally slow ʽPain In My Heartʼ, a song that should have rather been given to Hole because it needs that extra rotting-corpse graveyard-punch which Courtney could have provided far more ffectively than the down-to-earth Bjelland.

But despite the occasional setbacks, Spanking Machine is still somewhat of a pervert master­piece of the genre, whatever that genre might be. It's loud, it's fun, it's angry, it's occasionally orgasmic, it doesn't give much of a damn whether it «succeeds» or not, it looks dumb but really isn't, it threatens to be boring but you'd have to be pretty boring yourself to honestly find it boring — in short, just a happy thumbs up and be done with it.

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