With
Heavy Flow, feminist punk trio
Skinny Girl Diet deliver a bold debut full of grungy catharsis and massive, blown-out fuzz. Since their early teens, London-based sisters
Delilah and Ursula Holliday and their cousin Amelia Cutler have been making deep, lo-fi noise and building a reputation for their politically charged lyrics and image. An early gig saw them opening for
Slits guitarist
Viv Albertine and, over the course of several EPs, they've come to be heralded as the next generation of riot grrrls. That's a lot to live up to before you've even released your first album, but on
Heavy Flow, they remain unflinching and steadfast, delivering a snarling assault of ragged, '90s-indebted grunge-punk. As singer and guitarist,
Delilah takes on the songwriting duties, while Ursula (on drums) and Amelia (on bass) glue them together. As unruly and raw as they present themselves, the three musicians all function in the same musical headspace, shape-shifting their tempos and segueing together into new sections with surprising fluidity. Early standout "OK" defiantly supports a depressive friend in need over a classic clean-to-dirty verse/chorus model that comes across as powerful and effective. "Silver Spoons" and the raucous "Yeti" are exciting and rebellious with their unrelenting walls of sound. On "Pretty Song,"
Delilah snarls "women in the world are bleeding, I'm not gonna write a pretty song," confronting the stigma around periods, a subject directly implied by both the album's title and cover photo. With so much vague posturing in the music world, it's refreshing to hear a band (and such a young one at that) offer up such a straightforward and honest take. Confident, messy, and totally human,
Heavy Flow is a solid debut. ~ Timothy Monger