Lambrini Girls - Who Let The Dogs Out
“Not just bad apples, it’s a whole rotten tree!”
Who Let The Dogs Out is the debut studio album by UK garage punk duo Lambrini Girls. In it, the group attempt to, through the brash lens of punk rock, address a variety of important social topics, whilst taking a humorous approach to a lot of the lyricism. The reason I say “attempt” is I believe that a lot of it falls significantly short of the mark.
First off, I have to say that I understand that the ideals of punk music are not based in refined musicianship, complex structuring or any sort of convention. Having said that, I believe that, to effectively justify the unorthodox approaches to vocals or instrumentation, a punk record has to really be saying something. And, unfortunately, I think that Lambrini Girls deliver what is ultimately a fairly surface-level view on almost all the issues they discuss within the record. It feels like observations that most people make on a daily basis, rather than a bold declaration on these things in any new way. They also fail to tread the thin line between righteous and bratty, with a lot of the lyricism falling more into the territory of feeling like petulance than genuine statements. This isn’t helped by the vocal delivery either, which is particularly grating even by unorthodox, punk standards in a lot of places. It’s also way too high in the mix a lot of the time - something which is handled far better, for example, by contemporaries Amyl and the Sniffers. Their album Cartoon Darkness also featured a lot of harsh vocals, but they felt more controlled and less whiny, and didn’t overwhelm the instrumentals with their sheer, uncompromising volume.
The instrumentation is fittingly noisy and chunky, which works very well for the tone of the record; it isn’t interesting enough to balance out the off-putting vocals, but it does do an admirable job at keeping quite a few of the tracks fun and dynamic. There’s a colossal amount of energy within the record, and Lambrini Girls channel that energy very effectively; they’re also evidently having a lot of fun while recording, which does also somewhat benefit the experience of listening to the end result. Plus, the topics they bring up are very important, and worth making music about. However, a lot of the positives do unfortunately become largely hidden behind this album’s flaws.
The band unquestionably has potential, but, for now, on their debut record, they have yet to dig beneath the surface and bring something cardinally new to the punk rock space, instead of retreading tropes, and doing so in a way that isn’t always able to remain endearingly off-kilter rather than annoying.
4.0/10