Pleasure Venom are our new favourite post-punk queercore band from Austen TX, as evidenced by today’s video of the day for stunningly banging single, ‘Hive’. Driving punkrock beats, gnarly guitars, righteous vocals, DIY video = perfection. Pleasure Venom have it all in spades, and they’re bringing it to our shores this autumn … stay tuned for news of a UK tour in association with LOUD WOMEN Fest!
As we speak, the band are heading out on tour supporting Garbage: May 10 New Orleans The Fillmore May 12 San Antonio The Aztec Theatre May 14 Denver The Summit Music Hall
Effy Mitchell has just launched ‘Double Dare Ya’ on the world – the results of a documentary project interviewing bands and organisations that make up the UK’s current feminist punk/riot grrrl scene in 2019. It’s a brilliant piece of herstory capturing our scene right now.
LOUD WOMEN’s Cassie Fox was included (with a very sore throat at the time so she’s by far the most quiet woman in this!)
Interviewed bands / organisations : Peach Club Cheerbleederz Fresh Punks Dream Nails Penance stare Witching waves Cult Dreams Lunar Sounds Fig by four ZALU Babe Punch Farting suffragettes Suffrajitsu Noise and the naive Loud Women (Cassie Fox) Sounds for the cause ( Rynn ) Bomb the twist records ( Sarah ) Girls rock Edinburgh ( Caro and Fiona )
Featured bands + organisations + other contributors: Maid of ace Against me! Pussy liquor GLOSS FISTY MUFFS I, Doris Guttfull Petrol Girls Wet Brain Hooligans
Girl gang Leeds
Women in music Nottingham
Cramond island of punk
FYWROK festival
Petrol Girls continue to storm the barricades with their empowering and awesome new single, ‘Big Mouth’.
The video begins with a shout out to the Solidarity Not Silence campaign, which continues its fight to defend women who spoke out against abuse. It continues with a backdrop of faces and voices, including CassieFox (LOUD WOMEN’s founder / I, Doris), our beloved EfaSupertramp, and vocalist Chi Chi from German queercore band Hyena Hysteria.
Petrol Girls say of the video:
“There’s a lot of politics around who is heard and what that means, and many marginalised groups are only tolerated when they’re quiet – “keep your voice down/ know your place/ bite your tongue/ you best behave…” When they refuse this containment and control they’re met with attempts to silence them. A perfect example of this is the defamation case which aims to silence the Solidarity Not Silence girls – a group of women who each separately spoke out against the behaviour of a man in the music industry. This song is massively influenced by a series of interviews I did on the topic of voice with various vocalists, including Chi Chi who appears in the video, and Jacob V Joyce who also helped to write the chorus lyrics for this song. For the video we removed my recorded vocals from the breakdown to make space for other people’s voices – this is a tactic we’ve been developing for a while now, which aims to push this classic punk/ hardcore gesture of passing the mic as far as we can. Thanks to Kit, Maryam, Cassie, Chi Chi and Efa for contributing!”
Last month we gathered our best bitches and flew to New York for the launch of LOUD WOMEN NYC. Here’s a rockumentary, nay, Dorisumentary, from our all-time supreme favourites, the LOUD WOMEN team band I, Doris.
Our alltime favourites Petrol Girls have just announced a new album coming out 24 May – Cut & Stitch – and they’ve released a banging first single here, ‘The Sound’, capturing the essence of DIY punk. We are just so into this. The band explain more:
“We are not claiming our own music to define ‘The Sound’ – the track is more like an appreciation of sound as something that’s constantly evolving, and that everyone can use and develop in their own way. It’s a kind of manifesto for the political potential of sound… Make your own noise! Disseminate!’
The album Cut & Stitch is available to preorder now from Bandcamp.
Ever wondered what the story of Squeeze‘s classic ‘Up the Junction’ might look like from her point of view? London’s I, Doris are here to tell you.
The band are releasing today (fittingly, International Women’s Day) their debut single, ‘The Girl From Clapham’ – a loving, fuzzed-up tribute to the original song, with a poignant reminder that women’s experiences are all too often erased from history.
The new song lyrics were written by punk poet Janine Booth, and published in her brilliant anthology ‘Disaffected Middle Aged Women‘. Squeeze’s Chris Difford has given the new lyrics – and the I, Doris version of the song – his personal seal of approval. All profits from the sale of the track on Bandcamp are being donated to domestic violence charity Women’s Aid.
I, Doris are a self-proclaimed “kitchenpunk mummycore” band, consisting four 40-something women, dressed in dinnerlady-esque tabards, and answering to the name of Doris (that’s Doris on guitar, Doris on bass, Doris on drums, and Doris on – wait for it – keytar). Audience members are sworn in to the Doris collective with a group pledge at the start of each gig. Their live set is 60s girl-group style pop with lashings of fuzzy punk and plenty of good-humoured swipes at the patriarchy. At least, we think they’re good-humoured.
Bassist Doris (AKA LOUD WOMEN’s own Cassie Fox) takes the lead vocals on ‘The Girl From Clapham’.
L-R: Doris, Doris, Doris and Doris.
“I’ve always loved the song, and feel so honoured to get to sing this version” she says, “I am, legit, a girl from Clapham though. My childhood and teens were spent by/on Clapham Common, mostly trying to stay out of the way of my drunk and violent father. The song strikes a big power chord for me. That feeling at the end – of being trapped in a hopeless situation – it’s painfully familiar to a lot of people I’m sure, particularly women. This is the reason I was keen for the profits from the track to go to Women’s Aid.”
I, Doris are currently blazing a gloriously happy trail through the DIY gigs circuit, and beyond – they’ve played with Mekons in Leeds, the launch of Loud Women NYC in Brooklyn, they’re playing the Royal Albert Hall on 17 March, and Rebellion Festival on 2 August. Keep an eye on the I, Doris Facebook page for news of their continued adventures.
