by Theresa Kulbaga Brittany Howard may be my very favorite contemporary woman in rock. I’m a long-time fan of the badass band Alabama Shakes, having written about them before for this magazine. And when I learned that Brittany Howard was embarking on a solo project, I was sold on the idea well before the album was done. Released in June 2019, Jaime is an album that showcases Howard’s powerful songwriting. The first track, “History Repeats,” has been nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance. Maybe it’ll win. (In 2016, Alabama Shakes earned four Grammy nominations for their album Sound and Color and won three…
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Fatty Cakes and the Puff Pastries: A Grrrl Band Who Understands
Take one listen to Fatty Cakes and the Puff Pastries’ eponymous album (released November 9 and produced by Alice Bag), with its playful synthesizers and insistent guitar and drums, and vulnerability will not be the first thing to come to mind. Take another listen, however, and you’ll realize that this is a grrrl band who understands. What do they understand? Panic attacks, for one thing: the opening track, “Panic Attack,” is an homage to anxiety in all its unpredictable terror. “I’m a weirdo, I’m a weirdo, I’m a weirdo, I’m a weirdo” captures the repetitive bully that is a negative thought that will not go away. They understand fear in…
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Wendy O. Williams–Metal Priestess
Wendy Orleans Williams was born in 1949 in Webster, New York. Her father was a chemist for Eastman Kodak and her teachers and classmates remember her as a ‘shy, quiet girl who played the clarinet.’ I mention this because she is probably the most over the top performer to ever wander through the wasteland of punk and metal. At age fifteen, she ran away from home and hitchhiked across the country before landing up in Times Square. There she met her lifelong musical and romantic partner, Rob Swenson. In 1976, Rob was using his conceptual art degree from Yale to create experimental happenings under the banner of “Captain Kink’s Sex…
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Good News from Treya Lam
Daffodils, violets, lionesses, redwood trees, wind and waves: Treya Lam's metaphors come from the natural world.
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A Look at Roberta Flack’s “First Take”
Summer is finally here. It’s been unbearably hot and muggy for days. What everyone needs is a record to chill out with. One that is light and airy. One that blows through your mind like a cool breeze. Women in Rock readers, I offer you First Take by Roberta Cleopatra Flack. Now, I know a lot of you are thinking Roberta Flack equals schmaltz. After all, she is known for a string of sentimental pop singles during the mid seventies like “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly.” Famous rock critic, Robert Christgau, (also known as the guy wearing a Wussy shirt in The Replacements…
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A Review of Tracey Thorn’s Record
Sometimes in the life of an audiophile, serendipity slaps you in the face giving you exactly what you want and really need. Such was the case when I first heard Tracey Thorn. Roxie and I were driving in the car and flipping from station to station. The oldies station had played one to many clichés so I switched to FM. This beautiful synth pop song bubbled out of the speakers. I recently had been thinking that I listen to too much guitar driven rock and needed more synthesizers in my audio diet. Ironically, the song was “Guitar” by Tracey Thorn. She was being interviewed by Fresh Air to promote her…
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Blondie’s Parallel Lines
How we attach ourselves to music is based on how we come across it, and who or where we are when we first hear it. For a long time I didn’t get Blondie. Awhile back I picked up a copy of Parallel Lines. For a few days it was the only record I wanted to hear. It was the right time and the right context. I’d like to take some time to share with Women In Rock why Blondie and this record are so important in the history of punk, women and my life as an audiophile. I started buying records around 3rd grade. I listened to the radio and…
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Simple Machines: The Wheel featuring The Juliana Experience and The Holy Rollers
Looking back on my life I feel I was really lucky to be who and where I was in the early nineties. I was in my early twenties and tapped into the D.I.Y. punk scene. I was part of a volunteer run record store called Network in Dayton, Ohio. My life was records, bands and zines. It felt like my friends and I were creating our own culture. It was the time of Riot Grrrl and Queer Core and the doors were wide open for everyone. There’s certain artifacts in my seven inch collection that I go back to over and over again and they still hold up. I like…
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Screaming Females in Ink and Bronze
All At Once is largely about the importance of art; the lyrics evoke color and line and material in a way that had me Googling artists and pondering the risks and rewards of painting and being painted, seeing and being seen.
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in/distilling a love of music
Words are metaphors: in the one case, my mother fills me, drop by magic drop, with music; in the other, she extracts what I need—which was also what she needed—from music and offers it to me like an essential oil, powerful and sweet. Oil and water: both sacramental, both used in baptism.