Harry Shiels
It’s an unassuming winter afternoon in Bristol city centre. Walking through the front doors of Rough Trade looks like an average, if slightly busy, Sunday lunchtime on the surface. However as you walk past the promo racks at the front of the shop something seems slightly strange. The same album is featured prominently on the welcoming shelves, adorned with insane variant names: “Gay Smurf Dick Blue”, “Golf Is For Idiots Green” and “My Grandma Died On This Couch Red”. This can only possibly mean one thing; Brighton’s hottest Riot Grrl X Noise Punk band Lambrini Girls are here for a pair of in-store shows and signings to promote their debut album Who Let The Dogs Out.
The live room tucked away at the back of the shop is jam packed with excited revellers. Within the darkened space is a wealth of tinnies and pints in hands, it’s easy to forget that it’s just gone 1pm as Lambrini Girls burst through the stage door to a tumultuous roar. They waste little time, a quick “how the fuck are we doing Bristol???” before launching into an old live favourite: ’Big Dick Energy’. It doesn’t take long at all for bassist Lilly Macieira-Boşgelemez to start climbing amps and for guitarist/lead vocalist Phoebe Lunny to abandon the stage, sink into the crowd and get everyone down on the floor.
Even just a year ago this would’ve been a high profile show for Lambrini Girls, but their popularity is rising so fast that this UK/EU in-store album launch tour is easy to define as “intimate” ahead of the massive step up in venues on their (damn near fully sold out) EU and UK tour this spring. With the primary core of the band being the duo of Phoebe and Lilly, they’re joined by guest drummer Demelza Mather for these dates, who does an excellent job battering the percussion, keeping the rhythm section running and encouraging the chaos. The front of house tech is doing an excellent job, the band sound clean and deceptively massive in this tiny space, with particular note going to Lilly’s pulverising bass tone rumbling through the room caked in dirt and distortion in the best way possible.
Continuing in this vein pulling from their back catalogue, next up is queer punk banger ‘Help Me I’m Gay’ taking the extended bridge to recognise all the “queer legends” in the crowd who want to participate. Likewise, 2024 single ‘God’s Country’ is received with electric excitement from the audience who get the first pits of the matinee going. The band ask the audience to split in half down the middle of the room, they oblige and in a rather entertaining moment nothing really happens. Lilly takes a moment before the next track to explain “when we ask you to split in half you’re supposed to run into each other when the music kicks back in… we’ll try that again in a bit”.
With homage payed to their prior work, we’re now fully in Who Let The Dogs Out territory. Taking aim at rampant sexism in “old-boy” corporate worlds, lead single ‘Company Culture’ batters the audience and encouraging more mayhem. Phoebe take a moment to breathe, taking pulls from a can of Red Stripe, having a little joke and noting “it’s really hard to get people to have fun at 1pm… on a fucking Sunday”. However, blistering ACAB album opener ‘Bad Apple’ proves that no matter how hard it may seem, the duo can stir up mayhem anytime anywhere.
Phoebe’s chatting with the crowd and offering explanations of each track so far, the melodic noise punk of ‘Love’ resonates through the room with no real introduction in a change of pace. However the next track is well worth talking up, “You might never get to see your favourite band and you won’t even know it”; a particularly barbed rendition of album cut ‘Filthy Rich Nepo Baby’ strikes a chord for anyone who has a passion for underground music or dreams of participating in the industry themselves.
With Phoebe making a call for the last two songs, live favourite ‘Craig David’’s call and response silliness is lapped up by their adoring audience. Addressing the sound tech with “Mr sound man, spin that shit”, fittingly bringing an end to their set with album closer and certified banger ‘Cuntology 101’. The synth samples blare out of the PA and all three musicians drive the crowd into a final furore of dancing, bouncing, shouting ‘cunty’ in a similar call and response manner to their previous track and producing one of the best moments of their sets.
If this little 45 minute taster is anything to go by then Lambrini Girls extended tour in a few months is set to be some of the most fun and exciting shows of the year without question. Their defiant and empowering energies remain the same in wake of their critically lauded debut album, the only difference is the size of the stage they’re playing on.
