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a considered opinion: spinnerette - self-titled
Brode Dalle is to Joan Jett what Mark Lanegan is to Tom Waits (what J-Devil may be to Mick Jagger, what that dude from the Darkness is to Diamond Dave, etc.), that is to say she is as close as it comes to a contemporary re-embodiment of a singular original. Her work with the Distillers was hypnotizing because as a front woman she was brazen and ballsier than basically every contemporary she had at the time, circumventing the conventions of what is perhaps the most quintessentially male genre in popular music.
In other words, her restraint is not what got her noticed.
I am surprised, then, to find that on the vast majority of her first outing with new act Spinnerette, Brody has elected to show us a softer, restrained side. The signature full throttle howl has largely been replaced with more delicate (and admittedly lovely) intonations, and the battering ram guitars have been traded for touches of synth and furtive leads. There are no three-chord punk heroics to be found, and the flashes of brilliance peppered throughout defy that expectation, with tracks like the eerie, barn burning “Impaler” and “Cupid” demonstrating an experimental flare that held my rapt attention for repeated listens. Ditto with the 8 + minute album closer “A Prescription For Mankind”, which is pure stoner-metal theatrics (QOTSA fans should take note… I did). However, while all of this adds up to a great collection of material, with arrangements and instrumentation that owe a lot to the tried and true combination of bombastic low end and Alain Johannes, the album never quite got around to brutalizing me in the way that I was hoping for.
As a final aside, I do have to pick one bone with this record, and it concerns the fact that both “Valium Knights” and “Bury My Heart” are nowhere to be found. Why? Why leave two of your BEST songs, which you previewed in the lengthy run up to release day, off of your full length debut? Era Vulgaris syndrome must be catching, I guess.
Spinnerette took a long time to give us this record, and for the most part the waiting seems to have paid off, in spite of the fact that it takes its intended audience in a vastly different direction than expected. And yes, you can count me amongst the belly-aching masses, someone who is confounded by the unexpected change of pace. But then again, given her history, maybe that is exactly what Ms. Dalle is going for.
Some American RECOMMENDS Spinnerette - Self-Titled (and the Ghetto Love EP too).
