There isn't a punk rocker on Earth that doesn't want to hate Brody Dalle. When the singer first appeared on North American soil and formed The Distillers, she didn't so much feminize punk as attempt to play with the boys, like the boys but, because she wasn't much of a singer or much of a songwriter, only ended up sounding conveniently ironic on the mic; not really adding much to the scene, but certainly taking as much as she could from it. A quick marriage to Tim Armstrong of Rancid significantly improved her stock with punk scenesters exponentially and, conspicuously, the songs did begin to improve by Coral Fang which found The Distillers coming into their own as a passable aggro-punk outfit but then Dalle ditched Armstrong (raising the ire of punks that had revered her only months before) and shacked up with Queens Of The Stone Age singer Josh Homme. Punks were angry (why do fans always take these things harder than those that are actually involved?) and indie rock fans were disgusted; speculation that Dalle was the next big celebrity succubus (like Yoko Ono, Nancy Spungen and Courtney Love, only famous for who she's fucking) ran wild and, because The Distillers had disbanded, there was no new music to prove them wrong. Now, after a tease EP, Brody Dalle's new project, Spinnerette, has a full-length album out and it lives up (or down, depending on how you look at it) to expectation.
…There's no wondering on where it came from either. The flavors of every single artistic endeavor that Josh Homme has ever laid his hands on not only dominate every micro-tone of Spinnerette, they also power it so completely that there's no chance it could have existed without his input in some capacity. From the very first hand-clapped, attenuated blues-rock licked moment of “Ghetto Love,” every damned move the thirteen tracks on Spinnerette's debut make step of the same kind of swagger that graces those albums released by Queens Of The Stone Age, Kyuss and Eagles Of Death Metal with the obvious alteration being that it's being passed along here with more estrogen.
And there is no mistaking that there is estrogen to spare. In the interim between Coral Fang and Spinnerette, Dalle got a little more comfortable in front of the mic and is making a vested effort to try and sing methodically rather than simply spit syllables through songs including “Geeking,” “Baptized By Fire,” “Sex Bomb” (not a cover of Flipper, incidentally) and “The Walking Dead.” The results are positively flabbergasting; because Dalle never even tried to sing with The Distillers, it's unlikely that anyone even knew she could but the vibes and melodies are always at the center of the hooks on Spinnerette and the results are surprisingly, refreshingly impressive.
With such an unexpected creative turn in effect here, one has to wonder how to qualify Spinnerette. Where should the congratulations go? For Dalle, there's no doubt that this album is the singer's single best release to date; the melodies, lyrics and vacuum-sealed guitar-and-beat focused arrangements are the tightest in her songbook. By the same token, while his name is only formally attached to one song (“Impaler”), it's impossible to miss Josh Homme's influence on each song, so who's responsible? In that race, Dalle wins by a nose because this is the first time she has ever actually earned any of the praise she's so generously been afforded; the revelation that comes with Spinnerette is that, after nine years, she's only hitting her stride now.
Artist:
Spinnerette online
Spinnerette myspace
Download:
“Sex Bomb” from Spinnerette's self-titled album.
Album:
Spinnerette's self-titled debut comes out on June 16, 2009 on Anthem records. Pre-order it here on Amazon .
