The Lambrini Girls are not known for their subtlety. Their debut album, Who Let The Dogs Out, dropped on January 10th of this year, raging against the patriarchy just days after the New Year. Songs like “Cuntology 101,” “Filthy Rich Nepo Baby,” and “Big Dick Energy” provide listeners with stinging one liners and powerful themes throughout the entire piece.
English natives Phoebe Lunny and Lilly Macieira have dubbed their genre “PARTY MUSIC FOR GAY ANGRY SLUTS” on their Bandcamp, adding to an ever-expanding library of angry female artists in the modern punk genre. Bands like Destroy Boys, Cheap Perfume, Grumpster, and Mannequin Pussy have kept the genre alive and well after many groups seemed to fall apart after the pandemic. Lunny and Macieira’s album destroys the notion that they’re going anywhere but right into the face of oppressors to scream at them for their continuous harm to the world.
In their song “Bad Apple,” Lunny reams the police state, raging that “law and order all exploits us,” and returning at the end of the verse to scream “Protect and serve, point and shoot, Officer, what seems to be the problem? Can we only know post-mortem?” The searing words that are delivered across the album are anything but covert, meant to drive a painful stake at the establishment created by straight, white men. Another track on the album, “Big Dick Energy” delivers an equal amount of anger and disgust, delivering lines like “Big dick energy, how big is that dick in reality?” in the first 35 seconds of the song. Lunny goes on to also say within two minutes, “Big dick energy, crying ironically, Yet you act like I’m your mother and your therapist.” The song slaps together both traditional punk vocals with a slam-poetry proclamation at minute 3:30 to put the nail in the coffin (one that they would argue is for those white men they’re yelling at). Accompanied by Macieira’s powerful, grungy bass riffs, the duo makes their emergence known and intentional.
If it wasn’t already overwhelmingly apparent, the two have an agenda in mind, and one they will not ease away from. According to an interview they did with Rolling Stone, Lunny went on record saying, “When it first started, for me personally, it was very much like, ‘We’re going to be a fucking sick queer band and we’re going to come in sticking two fingers up being like “Fuck you all.’” She also went on to add that “What we really want to do is get ourselves into spaces that aren’t designed for people like us.’” The notion is evident in tracks that they released prior to their first album like “Terf Wars,” spouting lines like “shut your stupid fucking mouth you stupid, you terf, You’re not a feminist you’re a stain on this earth.” TERF refers to a term popularized in the late 2000s refers to feminists who are “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” but was a prevalent ideology in feminist circles for decades prior. People like Valerie Solanas were known to use sly ways of thinking to remove trans-women from feminist movements. In Andrea Chu’s essay “On Liking Women,” Chu evaluates Solanas’ “SCUM Manifesto” as an addition to the wildly misguided hatred of trans-women in “pro-women” circles. Lunny would likely spit in the face of someone like Solanas, shouting things like, “A proofreading feminism at your own volition, This is not your space, ‘Cause this space belongs to all women!”
Lunny and Maceira situate themselves in a position to rage against such an idea and many more. They challenge straight norms and shove a mirror into the face of those who have enjoyed the lifestyle of upper-class-ness, whiteness, and maleness for far too long. Beware, the Lambrini Girls are coming for you, and they’re bringing all their delicious, punk-driven queerness with them.
