Spinnerette
Spinnerette
Rating: 2.0
Label: Anthem
Holy crap, what a press release! I know, I know, I should make a balanced, informed opinion on my own about an artist or band's newly minted work without even looking at the PR gobbledygook. This one, however, really caught my eye. Among the warnings to "blue sky idealists" not to bother with Brody Dalle's debut Spinnerette record, as it "rages outside the cages of conformist society," is a bold claim that the album is the sonic representation of "a sweaty black glove holding a lollipop's stick, shoving it into crushed glass before offering you the first lick." Yikes!
Mention broken glass in terms of rock 'n' roll and you can't help but conjure the Stooges, a band whose appeal was based in no small part on their tightrope walk over the precipice of self-destruction. There was, also, the fact that they were barely what one at the time might call "musicians," with made their approach to their numb-skull songs about real cool times amongst bored Midwestern afternoons feel particularly feral. Dalle, who rose to alterna-fame via the Distillers, if not via a much-reported-about love triangle co-starring Rancid's Tim Armstrong (the ex) and Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme (the husband), comes to us made up as whatever it means to be punk these days - tattoos, black hair, jeans, loud-fast-hard music - but that's all it is at this point: a style, recognizable by particular outfits and Hot Topic-purchased wallets attached to chains.
The dangerousness that Iggy represented or even the attitude that Joan Jett rode to stardom Dalle wears like a T-shirt. "You and I got a reason to live," she sings on "Geeking," a song that started out from a lullaby sung to she and Homme's daughter. In "Baptized By Fire," Dalle sings exultantly about "sailing to Bermuda blue," the kind of thing gutter punks would be railing against if they weren't already totalnihilists. In the case of rock 'n' roll, it always behooves the artist to show the audience dirt and grime, to confront us on the basis of playing the damn record, not via an advertising promise that Spinnerette "will practically crawl out of your speakers."
It's no wonder that Spinnerette does little prowling; Dalle wrote the material almost entirely on bass. You can hear this in the songs' leaden steps. Even "Sex Bomb" and "Walking Dead" seem to share the same bassline. Dalle is able to inject a little life into lead-off single "Ghetto Love" and "Sex Bomb" via her well-honed caterwauling, but when you're using Tom Jones' ideas, you can't expect to sound edgy. The record's fear factor is also deflated by one half of the band being the surviving two thirds of Eleven. Allain Johannes, virtuoso guitarist to the stars, is too much of an egghead for what Dalle's going for; "Impaler" is too complicated for Dalle, bearing too much of Johannes' wacky stamp. Johannes also handled production duties and it's his scientist's hand that finally makes Spinnerette the DMX-ready alternative album it is. In his hands nothing sounds unwieldy; the broken glass we are promised has been polished into marbles.
by Chris Middleman