Lambrini Girls - 'Love'
Unfazed by love, Lambrini Girls inflict maximum carnage with a blowtorch approach to modern day romance.
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of first-encountering the unruly, punk duo Lambrini Girls in the best-setting possible: live. In that environment (Brockwell Park) the saccharine, summery mood was brought to a magnificent boiling-point, when I had wandered into the seething, rage-rollicking cauldron of a Lambrini Girls mosh-pit. The angst and drive of the duo was erratic and incredibly fun as they inspired the crowd to riot with intent and purpose. It was later in the set, when Lambrini Girls intrigued me most, furnishing their antics with a grounded, slowed-down moment which forced the crowd into silence. During this, from the height of the stage-turned-soapbox, the pair spoke earnestly about issues circulating the world at that exact time. Both stirring and sensational, their words were truly punk in both topic and tone, before they soon again catapulted the crowd into a crucible of well-intentioned chaos. I was rendered impressed and invigorated.
Since that time, Lambrini Girls have become a staple of my weekly listening habits. When in the need for snappy, elastic punk with precision and motive, I would reel off volume-busting, head-butting tracks such as Lads Lads Lads, or White Van.Encouraged by news that their debut album Who Let The Dogs Out, is set to release in 2025, I have kept my ear to the ground, intercepting every single in rotation. Yet, whilst every single released so far this year has been exhilarating and extreme, it is their new single, Love, that has laboured me with nearly unquantifiable pleasure. As its title steadily implies, this song is bricked together by an examined interest in love and infatuation. However, do not be deceived, this song cares more about the sabotage of love and its chemical properties rather than the rose-tinted temerity exhibited in songs of the past.
Igniting with a roaring guitar riff, the track is furiously intent on nailing a riotous introduction. Soon joined by anvil-tempering drums, the guitar erupts with a fever of enjoyment. Both guitars intimately stir up a motivation for making pure-and-simple noise, and it is a brutal noise that the duo help manufacture. Nearly a minute into the song, and the guitars slumber for a mere moment, as vocalist Phoebe Lunny preaches a palate-cleansing, poetic opening line “True love is nothing more than the wrong hill to die on.” Effortlessly erudite, this lyric repeats throughout, each time with a more volatile delivery. In this lyric, Lunny laments an obvious disconnection from romance and begins to immolate love with a torturously cynical, but crafty retort. Another verse is then bookended by the returning symphony of angst-driven noise that was first heard in the opening seconds of the song. In this verse, Lunny seizes further control, with a rapid-fire flurry of intricate anxieties that evidently are sourced in her own personal history.
But where the song exhibits an invested desire to be more than rage, is in the third verse, where a muted-drum rhythm fumbles in the background. Lunny is serenaded by a lush, shoe-gaze inspired riff that is vulnerable and ethereal. Apologising, “I’m so sorry for letting you down,” Lunny weaves a mantric cycle, where she is misshapen and unable to move forwards from the looping purgatory of regret.
Eventually silenced, Lunny is drowned out by the reemergence of a violently cathartic collision-course, where both drums and guitars synergise to envelop the track in soul-purging triumph. Like a therapy session, the song is mostly sonically detached from cliched concepts, instead exploring the consequences of regret that anchor us down to an inability to love again. Lunny is courageously cynical, and with the assisted musicianship of bassist, Lilly Macieira deals in harsh-truths about love.
The band themselves have stated that the song revolves around mistaking love for toxicity and with such topics in tow, it’s easy to see why they are often labelled as being a band of dual-habits. Simultaneously coarse, complex and vulnerable, the band are showing themselves to be true juggernauts in both scale and intensity. I love this song, it is short and snappy, but also epic in proportions. I love Love, and Lambrini Girls surely must be in love with their trajectory. The horizons are met with excitement for the dawning of their debut album, but for the time being I’m content to repeatedly raise-hell (in an auditory sense) to the blistering, bombardment of what Lambrini Girls have to offer now.
Words by Josh Mabbut
