The Bangs

Part of the Ladyfest tour this gig was as political as it was musical. Rammed to the walls with empowered girls and shy looking boys the rhetoric may have been bouncing off the converted but musically it was a strange mix.

** The Gossip* are from Washington and feature one sixties looking girl drummer, a shaggy haired bloke on guitar, and a "fat" (her words) girl singer. On record the constant garage guitars, throaty vocals and clattering drums would be indistinct from a whole barrage of similar records by riot grrrl bands (Bikini Kill, Huggy Bear, Babes In Toyland…) but of course the music was only half of the experience. Psychologists call it confrontation therapy combined with flooding, tonight we call it a girl with a Homer Simpson sized gut stomping around on stage in her underwear and sporadically leaping into the audience. She appears, of course, very cool for doing this. *The Gossip **have attitude and a manifesto, things desperately lacking in today’s music scene. However, later the singer will return to the stage to lay into the NME for saying Missy Elliot has a "fat arse". We will applaud her with our right on left wing liberalism. Then we might just question if her stage antics were actually any less authoritarian. Is it not completely contradictory to celebrate a fat woman in her underwear when simultaneously deriding thin women who do the same?

A short acoustic set by Sarah Dougher later we move on to The Lollies. The Lollies stick out like a bikini model in Afghanistan. Whilst the other acts sing of empowerment, lesbian sex, fighting against the oppressor etc The Lollies sing about fancying boys and falling in love. The Lollies are therefore great because they are fun, pop, and glam - but ideologically a little against the grain in this particular context. Think Kenickie with a leaning towards Luscious Jackson.

Headlining are* The Bangs*, hardcore garage grrrl punk from Washington. Sounding more than a little like Sleater Kinney the tunes are immediate, occasionally dischordant, and usually fierce. Variation is not their strong point though, a simple formula worked and reworked for the duration. However, for what it is it’s a clear cut above the likes of The Donnas, a band who seem to construct all their songs out of the same three chords. Lyrically it’s impossible to understand a single word but the amount of shouting would suggest they’re quite pissed off. And that’s probably a good thing, and very much in context.