The revival of space age pop and exotica proved almost as chauvinistic as the music's original heyday four decades earlier. Virtually every reissue seemed geared to the male psyche, with gorgeous women on the covers, cocktail recipes in the liner notes, and wonderfully cheesy grooves promising to lubricate the art of seduction.
Music for a Bachelorette's Pad is a corrective to the trend, raiding the Atlantic and Warner archives to assemble two dozen femme-centric tunes that turn the tables, proving that sex was just as much on the minds of postwar women as it was with their men. Latter-day sexpots like
Madonna,
Britney, and
Xtina have never recorded anything quite so dizzily sensual as
April Stevens' absurdly breathy "Teach Me Tiger," nor have they wrought music as sinister and predatory as
Ann Richards' "Evil Gal Blues."