This week Lola Who is featuring a wide range of kickass women, including Grimes, U.S. Girls, Lou Doillon and Dilly Dally.
Listen here…
Grimes Art Angels
Grimes had a tough go in 2014. Her single Go, originally written for Rihanna, was met with widespread disappointment as an apparent bid for crossover success. She criticized the ALS challenge and people with ALS told her she was the worst person. Meanwhile, she made an entire albumher would-be follow-up to the critically adored “Visions”but decided to scrap the entire project because it sucked. All this makes 2015 Grimes definitive triumph all the more triumphant. “Art Angels” is a visionary and singular masterpiece that demands repeat listens. There is truly little to compare it to. Its Aphex Twin-level electronic music mastery. Its 90s pop completely reimagined. Its a kaleidoscope of sounds and influences. Its underground music with stadium-sized ambition. Its a bold artistic statement. Long live Grimes.
Dilly Dally Sore
Dilly Dally is exactly what you shouldnt do when getting to your nearest record store or preferred streaming service to check out “Sore,” the debut album by the Toronto soft-grungers! Front-woman Katie Monks sings with utter disregard for haters and the well-being of her vocal chords. Imagine that Karen O got sloppy drunk, punched Francis Black off the stage and started singing for the Pixies. A) thats a dope thing to imagine, and B) that gives you a faint idea of what Dilly Dally sounds like. Though this is all very well trodden territory free-wheeling youngsters with a taste for loud, distorted guitar music Dilly Dallys succeeds in instilling an intangible newness in their sound that makes us vigorously headbang like the 90s never happened. Though “Sore” opens with the filthy Gigantic-esque banger Desire, it finishes with the unexpected and atmospheric piano ballad Burned the Cold.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard Papier Mâché Dream Balloon
Have you ever seen so much nonsensical whimsy in one band and album name? King Gizzards music reminds me of those quick scene transitions in Austin Powers moviesan instant time warp back to sixties psychedelic sillinesscolourful face paint, bubbles, tie-die, dated dance moves like the mashed-potato and that peace-signs-over-the-eyes thing. This is definitely a band existing forty years too late but damn it if they dont do it well. Like the comparable sixties bands with equally ridiculous names: Vanilla Fudge, Iron Butterfly, The Red Crayola with The Familiar Ugly etc
The Gizzards are not without charm and impressive musicianship. As much as their name makes them seem like a group of 15-year-olds who smoked weed for the first time and decided to start a band, they are grown Aussie men with real musical talent and unabashed love for bubblegum psychedelia.
Lou Doillon Lay Low
Lou Doillon is the daughter of Jane Birkin (1960s actress/singer and namesake of the Hermes Birkin bag) and younger sister to actress/ singer Charlotte Gainsbourg. So she is of a long lineage of impossibly cool and creatively prolific women. As an actress Doillon has appeared in almost 20 films and as a model she has been the face of both Givenchy and Chloé. Her new album of lovely, bluesy, Feist-y songs is co-produced by Taylor Kirk of Timber Timbre. Its pretty cool. If youre cool, youre likely already lounging in a café where this album is on the stereo. If youre not cool, listening to this album will help you with that. But if youre reading this then youre probably pretty cool, so congratulations.
U.S. Girls Half Free
It takes minute, when diving into Half Free while initially grooving to the disco-infused future-retro sound that Pitchforks Stuart Berman describes as part Shangri-Las, part Sun Ra before you realize that theres some pretty heavy stuff happening lyrically. Its right around the time of the first refrain “Now I’m going to hang myself/ Hang myself from my family tree” from the opening track Sororal Feelings, about a woman married to a man who already played the game with her two sisters prior. In the following 8 tracks Meghan Remy sings as several women, spinning dark and grimly detailed stories about the shared trauma of half freedom. The result is full excellence.
