So Fine

Telepathe are an electro-pop duo from Brooklyn. The two girls have been playing together for years, and were previously in the art/prog rock band Wikkid. I have repeatedly noticed that when I go to Todd P type shows in Brooklyn, Telepathe are one of the only all-female bands in the line-up.

Telepathe recently released their first full length album, Dance Mother (produced by David Sitek from TV on the Radio) on IAMSOUND Records. While their previous releases were more in the pseudo-rap vein, this new record is much more danceable. They are currently on tour with Ladytron and the Faint. Also, one of my favorite young graphic designers, Kate Moross, designed their new t-shirts. I want one.

This song has been playing on repeat in my house. We can't get enough!:


Also, here's an interview they did with NylonTV on Iraqi pop music, being female musicians in the indie world and their cat:

Child Prodigy

Mica Levi AKA Micachu is a 21-year old musician from the UK. She spazzily plays a tiny guitar and has an endearing cockney deadpan. Although she was classically trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, she often uses unconventional instruments which are customized/homemade. She is also a well-known DJ in the London grime scene, and was commissioned to compose an orchestral piece for the London Philharmonic at the mere age of 20.

With her band Micachu & the Shapes, she recently released her debut album Jewellry on Rough Trade Records. She is playing tonight and tomorrow in NYC (March 24: Death by Audio and the 25th: Pianos), if you are around, you should really go!

PS. Thanks Liam!

Never took the art test

For those of you who miss Tracy and the Plastics, they may have "broken-up", but apparently Wynne Greenwood is still making music (and cool weird videos) just like the old days of Tracy, Nikki & Cola. This video was part of an installation called "Face It" she had in 2008 at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects:

Let me go where my pictures go

Linder Sterling, known simply as "Linder" was an important figure in the Manchester music scene of the late 70's and early 80's, influential collage artist and lead singer of the post-punk band Ludus. She is also a photographer and best friend to Morrissey, responsible for the photo collection "Morrissey Shot."

Along with Peter Saville, she designed many of the iconic album covers for the bands in the Manchester/Factory Records scene. Most notably, she did the cover for The Buzzcocks' "Orgasm Addict." Apparently, Pete Shelley wrote The Buzzcocks' classic "What Do I Get?" with Linder in mind.


















A radical feminist, Linder's work (be it collage, music or performance) had a central theme of challenging cultural expectations of women. In Ludus, her lyrics tended to explore sexual politics. In the chorus of "Little Girls," she demands, "Little Girls, shake up, wake up! Let's remember how to use our wings." In "The Escape Artist" she addresses women's safety with the lyrics, "I was thinking wishfully, just how pleasing it would be to walk at midnight unafraid, to open my door, be quite safe." In "Breaking the Rules" she discusses the spectrum of sexuality.

In the early 80's, the famous Manchester music venue The Haçienda was what she described as "a male preserve", where they frequently played soft-core porn on the televisions. One notorious Ludus performance, on December 5, 1982, Linder decided to take her revenge and demonstrate her confrontational feminist tactics. Before the performance, she decorated every table in the club with a red-stained tampon and a cigarette butt. She also handed out pieces of raw meat wrapped in pornography. Despite her vegetarianism, she constructed a dress made entirely of raw meat which she performed in, with a dildo underneath which she revealed at the end of the performance. Linder said that the meat and tampons were supposed to represent "the reality of womanhood" and the dildo "manhood, the invisible male of pornography. That it can be reduced to this, a thing that sticks out like a toy." Linder managed to completely scandalize the usually aloof, unflappable rock kids of the Hacienda, who by the end of the performance had backed away from the stage and could barely bring themselves to applaud. Even Tony Wilson himself was very concerned about the potential of blood dripping on the floor and had her escorted out of the venue. That's punk rock, Linder.

I found this interesting recent interview she did with the Tate Museum where she discusses her collages from the 70's, in which she combined images of domestic spaces from women's magazines with cars and pornography from men's magazines as a way to critique "the various cultural monstrosities" of the time. She is now recognized as an important figure in the art world and her collages have been exhibited at museums such as the Tate and P.S.1. Her work has recently been collected in a retrospective book entitled "Linder: Works 1976-2006." The thing I like most about her art (both visual and musical) is that it has a very radical message but at the same time is very aesthetic/beautiful.

Swedes Do It Better

I just discovered this new band Liechtenstein from Göteborg, Sweden. The girls are signed to Slumberland Records, the label responsible for many of the most important girl-fronted indie pop bands of the 90's such as Black Tambourine, Stereolab and Aislers Set.

These ladies cite their major influences as post-punk girl bands (guess who?) Girls At Our Best!, Dolly Mixture, Talulah Gosh, Mo-Dettes, The Slits and the Shop Assistants. You can definitely hear the inspiration. I like these girls for keeping the tradition alive.

Also, check out the awesome stop-motion animation in this video:

The namesake

I named this blog after largely forgotten, nonetheless seminal, British post-punk band Girls At Our Best!, who formed in Leeds, England in 1979.














In actuality, there was only one girl in the band, lead vocalist Judy "Jo" Evans. While her distinct, soaring, bittersweet vocals may make the music sound light, it is not without a message. Evans' tongue-in-cheek lyrics tended to examine issues of politics, excess and the status quo. The song "Politics" is a cheery satirical look at American-style campaigning, "Go For Gold" criticizes middle-class lavish consumption and "Warm Girls" is a critique of the institution of marriage.

Funny side note, my friend recently informed me he attends Cambridge University with Judy Evans' daughter. Maybe he can hook me up for an interview some day!