Explosive U.K. duo debuts with the excellent Who Let the Dogs Out
On the engagingly titled “Cuntology 101,” the U.K. duo Lambrini Girls offer a seminar on what it means to be, well, cunty. “Learning how to let go is cunty/Having cum on my shirt is cunty/Sensing boundaries is cunty/Respecting others is cunty,” they offer, over a danced-up electro-punk whirr that would’ve been right at home on the first Le Tigre album. The sound and message bring to mind the very best of riot grrrl and late-Seventies art-punk, and on Who Let the Dogs Out, singer-guitarist Phoebe Lunny and bassist Lilly Macieira are agit-noise radicals for our time.
The band debuted with the killer 2023 queercore single “Help Me, I’m Gay” and the EP You’re Welcome. They made Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Songs of 2024 list with “Company Culture,” a thrashing takedown of office sexism of the creepy-boss variety (included here on their debut) that came with a video where the two trash a grim basement office — bringing new meaning to the phrase “not safe for work.” In a recent interview, Lunny laid out the band’s political outlook: “Free Palestine. Free the Congo. Free Lebanon. Free Syria. Trans lives matter. Fuck the police and fuck the government.” On Who Let the Dogs Out, the music is just as blunt-force. Standouts like “Big Dick Energy” and “No Homo” lash out at misogyny and sexism, while “Bad Apple” is a bracing bowshot at racist policing with a dervish beat and a sandblasting guitar riff, and “Filthy Rich Nepo Baby” defenestrates a fake lefty-rock poseur “who wouldn’t know what socialism is if it punched him in the dick.”
Meanwhile, Lambrini Girls also add their own story to the decades-old angst-thrash canon. On “Special, Different,” Lunny sings about being neurodivergent in a way that’s both defiant and admirably honest, turning the title phrase into an uplifting chanted mantra. “Spare me your sarcasm, because I don’t understand it,” she demands as the guitars swell and storm with galvanizing rage. This is a fantastically violent album, and it’s an inspiring one too — every dick punch they throw hits your heart just as hard.