Bratmobile - Girls Get Busy [Evergreen]

Bratmobile broke up in 1994, which should have been the end of it. They reformed six years later, and Girls Get Busy in 2002 turned out to be the record where Allison Wolfe, Erin Smith and Molly Neuman sounded least like a reunion and most like a band with unfinished business.

The songs are faster and funnier than anything on the early records. "I'm In The Band" opens with Wolfe's deadpan exasperation at exactly the kind of guy every woman in a touring band has met. "Shop For America" is a two-minute skewering of post-9/11 consumer patriotism that arrived while the ink was still wet. "Cheap Trick Record" and "Don't Ask Don't Tell" are pure Smith, all economical surf-punk guitar and no wasted bars. Wolfe has never been a conventional singer and that remains the point: the delivery is conversational, bored, withering, and it lands every time.

Riot grrrl gets remembered as a moment rather than a body of work, which does records like this a disservice. Girls Get Busy is a genuinely sharp punk album that happens to be funny about it.

Kill Rock Stars reissue on evergreen coloured vinyl, back in print for the first time in years.