Wild Flag s/t (Merge Records)
Grrrl riot. No, but seriously. Grrrl riot.
While I like the overall sound of Wild Flag, I can’t help but get past the notion that they are former members of other notable bands, most noteworthy perhaps Sleater-Kinney. So why couldn’t this just be a new Sleater-Kinney album with a slightly tweaked lineup, I do not know.
Certain songs remind me of what made rock music with female vocals so important- from Blondie to Joan Jett. Other songs remind me of bands I’d rather soon forget, such as Hole, but perhaps maybe the world itself couldn’t ignore.
I guess that the best way to describe this album—to give you its Catch-22 if you will—is to simplify some of my musical preferences. I believe, in a lot of ways, that the peak of music for me died with Kurt Cobain. I’m stuck in that grunge mentality of music where bands not only like Nirvana reign supreme, but also lesser known bands from those times such as Spacehog, Hum, 1000 Mona Lisas, Dandelion, Sponge and too many others to list. So, for me, hearing things like old Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Blind Melon and the like is great. I’d like nothing more. So, to me, I really like this Wild Flag album because it kind of fits a certain genre that I’m used to—one that I feel comfortable with. But at the same time, that’s its downfall. For something coming out in the 21st century I would have expected something different than what we would have heard from these women in the past. Again, it’s good to me and probably is to a lot of others who grew up as I did, but will the ten year old mallrat in a $25 Nirvana t-shirt get it? That remains to be seen.
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