Something to Dance To

I was listening to my music archives the other day and went through quite a bit of Siouxsie & the Banshees and Lydia Lunch's stuff. The recent reminding of both musicians and groups made these two discoveries all the more pleasant and welcome ...

The Violets sound a lot a lot a lot like Siouxsie ... er maybe more like the Creatures. The female vocalist has quite the talent, really belting it out with that unique Siouxsie-esque screech. The rest of the band sounds sort of like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs sans Karen O. Pretty stellar guitar work here (jumping all over the place, integrating the bass with the melody), and the drumming ain't bad, either. In fact, it really sounds like Budgie's on drums: it's tribal, paced, concrete, and firm, but still experimental in terms of rhythms and how it all fits in with the rather sparse instrumentals. Be certain to get to their MySpace page.

Finally Punk is definitely the cheerier of these two, but absolutely no less compelling. Most of the band's songs are rather short and spastic, but pretty damn chaotic (random drum fills, flute flails, goofy riffs). I love the vocalist so much, though. She sings in this weird sort of monotone that's a little restrained, I think, but very bold. There's no competition between vocalist and instrumentalists which makes the whole production very exciting and more pleasing than your generic "noise" group would probably be.