By 1999, riot grrrl pioneer
Joan Jett was all but reduced to being a nostalgia act. The unfortunate thing was, she still had plenty of good songs left in her, even if her days of hitting the charts were long gone. In fact, she had more aggressiveness in her than ever, as
Fetish proves. Placed on the compilation album of the same name, "Fetish" features
Jett screaming lyrics that -- for the first time in her recorded career -- truly touch on the obscene. "You look good in latex, get it off, we're having rough sex,"
Jett rasps, increasingly bordering on dominatrix imagery with such come-ons as "relax while I pound your ass" and "restrain while I f*ck your head." Though
Jett was never one to shy away from testing boundaries, this is easily her most blatantly controversial material to date. Sonically,
Fetish is just as striking -- it's an unpolished, industrial metal affair that sounds amazingly comfortable, given the fact that it is being played by a middle-aged-'80s rocker. Perhaps that's what makes a song such as "Fetish" so intriguing -- while this is certainly not the
Joan Jett of yesteryear, she sounds comfortable enough to make the music and lyrics work. It's a killer track, proving that
Jett not only has plenty of life left in her tank, but she's still got an abundance of creativity and surprises in store. ~ Barry Weber