This two girl-two boy band has been around for a year or two putting out 45's and EP's, but for some reason I have been unconsciously avoiding them. Perhaps it is because they are the current darling/scapegoats of the English music press (NME, Melody Maker), who are as fickle as they are thorough. You read one too many reviews and you think you know what they sound like: pale imitators of Sonic Youth touting trendy PC anti-paternalistic cliches. That they are the standard bearers of the London Riot Grrrl movement - London, city of trends and hollow rhetoric - only confirmed this hypothesis to my subconscious. So, I assumed they couldn't play, couldn't sing.
Fortunately, my compulsive record-buying got the better of me and I inevitably ended up with this 22-minute compilation. I was prepared for the worst, expecting titles like "shaved pussy poetry" to be yet more pseudo-feminist collegiate "let's shock the authorities" rant.
Well, I was wrong. Huggy Bear isn't 70's Sex Pistols or even 80's Sonic Youth. They actually give me hope: not all 90's punk bands are like Pavement, Archers of Loaf or any other band from Chapel Hill, the Pacific Northwest or D.C. I usually look to American indie bands for sincerity - but right now, most of them (particularly the all-male ones) lack any substance outside their own cynical slacker whinings. Huggy Bear have balls, they have ovaries. The girls have balls and the boys have ovaries and vice-versa. They make Sonic Youth sound old. They can sing and they can scream. Sometimes, in their East London accents, they even recite poetry. Not the sort of cheese you'd hear from the disciples of Morrison (Jim or Van), but shit about rape, slashing people's faces . . .
Of course, they're pretty pompous when it comes to interviews, album liners and the millennial coming of what they call Huggy Nation. Yes, they still believe in revolution-but their sincerity makes their music great. Shit, we're not all dead yet. (Alec Vance)
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