The Ladies

Cacaw, Self-Titled

As always, I want to focus on the ladies. In early August, I caught Chicago’s Cacaw, which is technically two women and two men (and two basses) at Shea Stadium and they completely blew me away. Storming through song after song of relentless sludge with two different female vocalists screaming on top, they were everything I had been looking for in a band—heavy, but without the burden of noise-dude pretense. The grit and lurch of early Babes in Toyland rippers like “Dust Cake Boy” and “Ripe” came to mind as I watched them. But it was like the Babes had been handed a cornucopia of uppers and downers to both ramp up their speed and make their riffs heavier. Their new self-titled LP on Permanent Records features the songs I saw them play live like “White Kitty Gone.” At first I was unsure about the LP because it initially didn’t live up to Cacaw’s live act, but after a few more listens, I have come to really enjoy it. Buy it HERE.

Nu Sensae, TV, Death and the Devil

Nu Sensae, a bass and drums grunge duo from Vancouver, Canada, is another band that has been alleviating the summer blues with its recent release TV, Death, and the Devil out now on Nominal Records. Their music and the way they behave as a band seem like the product of two young people who were passed mixes of Flipper and Huggy Bear in their teens. I was one of those people, so duh Nu Sensae appeal to me. Their thundering basslines and West Coast hardcore-tinged drum beats, along with singer/bassist Andrea’s piercing and caustic screams and their months of consecutive touring—I missed their NYC gig while I was at Chaos in Tejas—hearken back to a time when snotty young bands didn’t just want to reminisce about Nickelodeon and draw triangles while eating pizza in their parents’ basements. There are elements of gloom and doom here—song titles include “Skull Mecca,” one of the album’s best tracks, and “I’m a Body”—but I am really hesitant to throw any bummer-related terms at them. Don’t know why but Nu Sensae make me feel pretty content. Get it from Nominal Records HERE.

All of these sludgy and thrashy ladies have me thinking of Star Pimp and how they are one of the most underrated bands from the 1990s. I wrote about them early on in my column but their Seraphim 280z LP will never sound bad to my ears.