Pencil Toes. Indie-guitars-and-electronics. Day-glo t-shirts.
Asymmetric hipster haircuts. Oh fuck, it's New Rave, rearing its deceptively
pretty head and reaching out its tentacles to grab my beloved underground
queer feminist rock scene in its brain-deadening stranglehold. Please,
please, no. Only, New Rave pisses me off. It makes me want to rant,
indignantly, at great length, and punch the next stupid NME-reading
fucker I see wearing a smiley face t-shirt from Topshop. New Rave offends
me, and Pencil Toes are far too inoffensive to do that. Innocuous, tuneful,
quite nice, a bit dull.
Emily Breeze just screams PJ Harvey (with a dash of Nick Cave and a sprinkling of Patti Smith), all rockabilly-styled bad-girl perfection and filthy, atmospheric blues. This is primal, whiskey-and-murder-ballads rock and roll -- the sort of thing that's so, so good when it's done well, but unutterably cringeworthy in the wrong hands. Luckily, Breeze's hands are the right ones. She's got an immensely powerful voice and a striking presence, and there's a hint of pathos in the blood and sweat of her music that always keeps it from straying over the line into cliché. This sort of music has always been a bit of a boys' club, its undercurrent of violence often directed in worryingly misogynistic ways. Emily Breeze turns all that on its head, and it's a sweet, sweet sound to hear. http://www.myspace.com/emilybreeze Jess Trash |