Lydia Lunch and Rowland S. Howard
Atavistic
Lydia Lunch is famous for being one weird lady. Since her rise to prominence as a member of the legendary New York No Wave affair Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, through her collaborations with members of the The Birthday Party and Sonic Youth, and her various and sundry spoken word efforts, she has been notorious for being provocative, confrontational, and generally pretty twisted. On her recently reissued 1991 album Shotgun Wedding, she teams with former Birthday Party guitarist Rowland Howard to deliver an incredible one-two punch of dark, perverted, brooding lyricism and violent, hard-driving rock. The band's five-piece setup creates a densely textured, atmospheric sound, with Howard's fierce, grinding guitar at the helm throughout. It's the perfect foundation for Lunch's "I've seen the other side and it's not pretty" lyrics and her throaty Marianne Faithfull-gone-to-hell-and-back voice. The reissue also comes with an intense live disc recorded in Amsterdam in '93, which contains most of the studio album's songs, plus "Gospel Singer," which Lunch wrote with Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon. Listen to this record long enough and you'll be looking in the shadows for monsters and corpses wherever you go.
Jesse Ashlock
last updated:
08/10/01
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