It’s 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, and I’m smashing shit with Lambrini Girls.
Singer and guitarist Phoebe Lunny lets out a guttural scream as she snaps a vase in two with a hammer. Within the meantime, bassist Lilly Macieira goes at a TV that merely gained’t crack with an axe. We’re at Smash It Rage Rooms in Southeast London, actually one in every of few such establishments throughout the metropolis, with the plan to guidelines grievances in regards to the music commerce — one factor the Brighton-bred punk duo usually do of their songs, on social media and at gigs — whereas, successfully, smashing shit. Nevertheless with heavy-duty defending gear masking our mouths and Limp Bizkit blaring throughout the background, it’s nearly amounting to muffled yells.
Nonetheless, we’re having a grand outdated time. At one degree, Lunny and I tee up for a form of beer-bottle baseball: They pitch a glass at me and I shatter it into 100 gadgets with my weapon of different. A few minutes later, we lastly break by means of the stiff TV and depart what seems like a pixelated bloodstain on its show display. Nevertheless lastly, red-faced and drained, we resolve to exit the destruction — solely to hunt out we nonetheless have 10 minutes left in our half-hour slot. Appears, being full of rage is exhausting.
Lambrini Girls know an element or two about that, having made their determine throughout the U.Okay. music scene with fast-paced, significantly abrasive punk songs tackling a variety of factors, from misogyny to TERFs to homophobia. Raucous dwell displays, led by Lunny’s in-your-face effectivity style, have led to the band touring for the upper part of 2024, along with stints throughout the U.S. and pageant slots at Glastonbury and Iceland Airwaves.
All through our first interview in October 2023 after the discharge of Lambrini Girls’ debut EP, “You’re Welcome,” I keep in mind Lunny saying that she extraordinarily doubted they could ever play with a band like Idles, whose sort of post-Brexit punk put renewed energy behind the type and has resulted in 5 Grammy nominations. Nevertheless in November, that they had been Idles’ direct help for two sold-out displays at London’s famed, 10,000-cap Alexandra Palace.
“We genuinely didn’t assume we’d play with them,” Lunny says as we reward ourselves with pints of Stella on the closest pub, which is so native it seems like we’re interrupting one factor as we step inside. Though the first current opening for Idles was a bit gradual shifting, by the second night “one factor merely fucking switched.”
“We walked on stage at 7 p.m. and all of the venue from the get-go was fucking packed,” Lunny says proudly. “And all people was like, let’s fucking go crazy.”
It’s these high-energy displays, full with a great deal of moshing and on-stage antics, which have made Lambrini Girls a band to look at. Nevertheless the sturdy word-of-mouth and stuck touring made crafting the band’s debut album an intimidating exercise.
“With out flattering ourselves, I really feel we’re recognized further for our dwell displays than we’re for our knowledge — up until now,” Macieira says.
Lambrini Girls hope that modifications with “Who Let the Canines Out,” launched on Friday by means of Metropolis Slang Info, a sleekly-produced firestorm of an album encapsulating their signature combination of political musings and offbeat humor. Take its determine, for example. It might probably be study into as a commentary on misogyny or, as Lunny jests, “a metaphor for late-stage capitalism,” nonetheless it’s really merely an inside joke about Baha Males’s 2000 hit that went too far. “We thought it was fucking hilarious,” Macieira laughs.
The 11-track report was written in Oxford all through two fast breaks from touring, and being up in opposition to the clock helped the band uncover that they work technique larger beneath stress. “People say you should have your whole life to jot down your debut album, nonetheless that wasn’t the case with us,” Macieira says. “We had been like, ‘OK, we merely gotta try this. Irrespective of comes out is what comes out.’”
“Who Let the Canines Out” begins with a bang due to “Unhealthy Apple,” a siren-laden tirade on police corruption and brutality backed by an unforgiving breakbeat. Lunny had been making an attempt to synthesize their concepts on the topic into monitor as a result of the murder of Sarah Everard by a Metropolitan Police officer in March 2021, nonetheless it saved coming out “fucking crap.”
“I was on the lookout for a way to make an umbrella critique on your complete policing system, however moreover not in a way which was insensitive, and highlighted fully totally different factors,” Lunny says, noting that she’s “aware it’s quite simple being a blonde white girly to be like, ‘Police are harmful!’”
She continues, “I’m coming from an enormous place of privilege to critique the police finally and by no means actually really feel fucking shit scared about it. I do know people from the police who’re good people, nonetheless the fact is the system is corrupt and it might be utilized in any technique to make it potential for points like sexual assault and murder are fully brushed beneath the rug.”
No matter its crucial start, “Who Let the Canines Out” rapidly ventures into the silly with “No Homo,” a monitor subverting the dated time interval that’s sure to get crowds going. “I like your face and it’s in a gay technique,” Lunny sings over a guitar line. “I promise no homo!” Though it’s meant to be a light-hearted romp, Lunny acknowledges that each one of it comes once more to the “self-deprecation that comes with internalized homophobia.”
“There’s lots guilt and shame nonetheless for due to this fact many queer people, even if you happen to occur to’ve surrounded your self in queer communities, like that doesn’t go away,” Lunny says. “For individuals who do like any individual and likewise you’re undecided within the occasion that they comparable to you, you’ll be capable of always be like ‘I’m merely gonna joke it off,’ although you’re type of taking the piss out of your self.”
Nevertheless the mid-section of the album sees Lambrini Girls deal with significantly uncharted territory: getting non-public. “Nothing Tastes as Good as It Feels” pulls from every Lunny and Macieira’s experiences with consuming issues, with the title paraphrasing Kate Moss’ infamous 2009 quote — “As my head hits the rim of the toilet lid/ Kate Moss affords no fucks that my interval has stopped/ I would like I was skinny nonetheless I’ll under no circumstances be adequate,” Lunny sings.
“Magnificence beliefs and norms merely fully destroy your fucking ideas,” she says. “That genuinely has had such a harmful affect on my life. I do know I slag off Kat Moss throughout the monitor, nonetheless she was as lots a sufferer of it as anyone else, significantly throughout the ’90s. She was fucking destroyed by the marvel and vogue commerce.”
By addressing the topic in a “brazen technique,” they hope that the monitor may assist start real discussions between associates and on-line, significantly as a result of the “heroin fashionable” look continues to realize repute on social media platforms like TikTok. “I merely hope it makes people actually really feel a lot much less ashamed or embarrassed,” Lunny says. “Because of I actually really feel ashamed and embarrassed of my very personal stuff, and I always will even singing about it. Nevertheless I merely hope that it helps people actually really feel a lot much less alone.”
One different monitor close to Lambrini Girls’ collective coronary coronary heart is “Specific, Utterly totally different,” which particulars, as Macieira locations it, “the bizarre, contradicting duality of being neurodiverse.”
“There’s a lot of energy in neurodiversity and there’s a lot of uniqueness. And folks strengths are celebrated as soon as they’re useful, nonetheless then the difficulties are shamed,” Macieira says, together with that it’s their favorite monitor on the report. “I really feel that monitor sums that up really viscerally and I uncover that very shifting.”
Lunny says it was “cathartic” to jot down from their very personal experience “going by means of the tutorial system and easily feeling really fucking foolish.” Nevertheless she’s nonetheless battling the considered letting the pores and skin world into her head by means of lyricism.
“I fucking hate doing that,” Lunny admits. “It’s gotta be achieved and it’s good, because of I do have to have the flexibility to write down stuff that’s relatable to totally different people. Nevertheless singing about points from a personal perspective is sort of a bit extra sturdy. Pointing the finger at your self is sort of a bit extra sturdy than it’s pointing it at all people else.”
Thankfully, sooner than points get too crucial, the album closes with a monitor titled “Cuntology 101.” Impressively reciting “cunt” 26 events in merely over two minutes, it’s an prepare in reclaiming a once-nasty phrase that has now reentered the zeitgeist in a further constructive form.
“All of the items we write is so fucking offended regularly. I wanted to jot down one factor that’s celebratory about merely being a messy bitch and loving your self,” Lunny says, together with: “People are afraid because of it gained’t get carried out on the fucking radio. Like, usually you’ve merely gotta take a bullet.”
As Lambrini Girls put collectively to return on tour this spring, along with a headlining current at London’s Electrical Brixton and one different run throughout the U.S., “Cuntology 101” is one they’re wanting forward to listening to crowds chant alongside to.
“I uncover it so excellent when people sing alongside to our songs, and truly it doesn’t happen that lots the least bit,” Maceiera says. “I did have a second watching Idles after we had been supporting them and easily seeing everybody throughout the crowd singing the lyrics, arms throughout the air and I was like, ‘I would love that.’ I’d adore it if people associated to our music and listened to our music adequate to want to scream the phrases once more at us.”
