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White Mystery Drops Punk-Powered 'Hellion Blender'

Street-level garage punk full of grit and flair

Named after an Airheads flavor and made up of two gingers, White Mystery recently dropped their latest album, Hellion Blender.

Alexandra Brooks White, aka Miss Alex White, and her brother, Francis Scott Key White, are the duo of ginger kids forming White Mystery. Miss White kicked off her music career playing guitar in a punk band when she was 13, followed by a stint in a band called The Red Lights. Later, she played with Chris Saathoff in a project called Miss Alex White and Chris Playboy. After Saathoff's tragic death in a car accident, she founded Miss Alex White and the Red Orchestra, dropping two albums.

In 2008, Miss White and her brother, Francis, started White Mystery. Since then, White Mystery has dropped a new album or EP every year, performed 1000 times on three continents, modeled for Levi Jeans, jammed with Robert Plant, and played on NBC's Last Call with Carson Daly. They've shared the stage with Iggy Pop, Garbage, Thee Ohsees, and Patti Smith.

Tagged as everything from psychedelic punk rock to alt-rock-country-punk to grit punk, what they are is stripped down garage punk, a raw, muscular sound with beau coup immensity.

Hellion Blender contains 10 tracks, opening with "Boy Next Door," a grinding, grimy punk tune with a dirty guitar from the bowels of hell and nuclear-powered drums. "Penny Saved" flat-out surges with luminous energy, riding on Miss White's maxed-out fuzzy guitar, as her shiny, raging vocals snarl overhead.

"Paint Yo'nails" sheds the wall of sound punch, going for a Spartan melody full of throbbing tribal drums and schmoozing, brawny guitar colors.. "Ghost Signs" starts off austerely, and then ascends to rough-and-ready punk momentum on a sneering psychedelic guitar.

Hellion Blender pumps out pulverizing tones, aching with visceral impetus, like demons fleeing the pit of Tartarus. Miss White's compact, compressed voice makes her the Mistress of Sonic Advantage, making Hellion Blender equivalent to an aural grand mal seizure.

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MUSIC

Goat Girl's 'The Man' Surges With Dazzling Garage Punk Energy!

New music video for 'The Man' plays scenes from 'Hard Days Night'

Charlotte Patmore

Written by Randall Radic

South London's Goat Girl recently released a new single and accompanying music video, called "The Man." The band, made up of Clottie Cream, Rosy Bones, Naima Jelly and L.E.D., will drop their self-titled debut album on April 6. A classic sketch by the late great comedian Bill Hicks inspired their band name.

Goat Girl's sound marries garage punk with a stylish flavor of indie rock. The result is vaguely reminiscent of Courtney Love's band, Hole: buff, de-rezzed, punk-Mafioso music full of gravitational frisson and shindig flavors, as if something gorgeously, nastily tight is being figured out and assembled.

"The Man" opens with jangly guitars and a throbbing rhythmic pulse flowing into a punk/barn dance melody exuding embedded lozenges of opaque ground zero colors. When Ellie's grimy guitar kicks in, the tune radiates expensively savage textures bordering on full-spectrum dominance, dirty and crunchily potent.

Rather than a wailing solo, the band rides a tranquil measure punctuated by muscular guitar chords underscoring Clottie's sweetly droning voice. "I bite my lips and taste my hips," she croons, as the music mounts to the venting guitars and crushing drums of the chorus. "You're the man, you're the man for me."

Clottie's cool, nonchalant, concentrated vocals unite the song, giving it a slo-mo atomic energy that's deliciously blasé, mutinous and sensual all at the same time. It's a haughty monotone radiating supercilious flair and intense almost abstract commentary, as well as suppressed eroticism oozing out in layered sumptuous waves. In effect, her tone of indifference assumes a fascinating voluptuous power.

The video, directed by C.C. Wade, presents a spoof of the Beatles A Hard Day's Night. The video cuts from images of the band preparing for a performance as their hotel is surrounded by hordes of worshipping male fans, desperate for just a glimpse of the band. After the performance, the band sneaks out a side door of the venue. Unfortunately our heroes are immediately spotted and chased through London by flocks of fanboys.

"The Man" is grand garage punk. The melody pulsates with intoxicating force and the rhythm groans with crazy, irresponsible ferocity. And Clottie's muttering voice imbues the music with a monomaniacally insane energy. Goat Girl has it going on!

The band will head out on the road this spring for a UK headline tour. A current itinerary is below, with U.S. touring news to be announced soon.