“Don’t assume, simply do,” may sound just like the form of phrase you’d catch on a tech bro’s tea towel as they sweep a creatine spillage into the sink, however typically there’s a grain of reality behind this form of motivational boilerplate language.

When Lambrini Women felt like they had been caught in impartial whereas writing their debut album towards the clock, for instance, the premise provided much-needed momentum. “We needed to comply with our instinct a bit of bit extra,” bassist Lilly Macieira says. “We needed to let the songs tackle their very own identification – it was about having an thought and seeing it by way of.”

Having toured onerous following the discharge of their 2023 EP You’re Welcome, the Brighton punk duo carried road-tested momentum into two brief retreats at a farm in Oxfordshire. It didn’t final. In the course of the first session they pulled collectively the bones of 4 or 5 songs that didn’t transfer past half-finished, after which they ran out of stuff to drink. “We had been hitting quite a lot of artistic partitions,” Macieira provides.

In the course of the second stint, although, they leaned into the strain they felt constructing. They cleaned out the booze aisle of the native grocery store, chasing beers with the sensation that every grain of sand falling by way of the hourglass would assist them make selections that had been economical and, due to this fact, true to their perfect of wrangling the kinetic vitality of their dwell units right into a snarling complete. “It’s a must to do one thing quick and it’s a must to do it nicely,” guitarist and vocalist Phoebe Lunny says. “In case you don’t have a alternative, you don’t have a alternative.”

Duly, Who Let The Canines Out looks like pinballing across the form of present that may go away you with a break up lip bleeding right into a beaming smile. It’s ferocious and humorous in equal measure, with the condensed writing course of serving to to carry out solely the core tenets of what Lambrini Women are about. There’s no fats right here, nothing extraneous in any respect.

Power Multiplier

Baked into their method is the idea that their music ought to hit with the identical irreverent pressure as their lyrics, and so they by no means lose sight of that. Of late, they’ve drawn comparisons to everybody from Idles and X-Ray Spex to Sleater-Kinney. However there’s this chin-out wit to their writing that feels solely their very own – a mix of gobby honesty and righteous fury that’ll rock you again in your heels simply as simply as their teeth-gnashing preparations.

“They go hand in hand,” Lunny says. “One can’t exist with out the opposite. It’s about ensuring they maintain sufficient area. A number of the time choruses received’t even have that many lyrics as a result of it takes away the impression, in the identical means that the instrumentals actually body sure strains. I feel the 2 are symbiotic.”

Broadly talking, it’s a foul thought to attempt to construct a home on a whirlpool. However right here Macieira reveals that it’s attainable to take action. Who Let The Canines Out is predicated upon a critical barrage of bass-driven craziness, with Lunny’s guitars handled mainly as a textural or melodic factor. “The bulk is decorative,” Lunny says. “It’s simply there to raise components that should be elevated. The bass may be very a lot the inspiration of the songs. I feel one of the best ways to steadiness the 2 is to not be an egotistical wanker about it, considering I have to play everywhere in the observe. I put it the place it must go.”

Macieira’s method is commonly sound-first, with a sense usually trumping a riff or hook as a creative spur. She is a pedal-head and a believer that the correct piece of equipment is usually a artistic instrument in the beginning relatively than additional alongside the road. For proof, look no additional than the filthy, unhinged album opener Unhealthy Apple and the jagged single Love, which had been conjured whereas she bought to grips with Randy’s Revenge, an analogue ring modulator created by the Québécois producer Fairfield Circuitry.

“Pedals are actually a giant a part of how I write,” she says. “I solely began enjoying bass in lockdown and I take heed to quite a lot of noise-rock. I take quite a lot of my inspiration from not having my instrument sound conventional. That’s the place I discover quite a lot of creativity, by messing round and utilizing my results for components relatively than tones.”

Velocity Check

Embracing this noise-rock ethos additional, the following transfer in Lambrini Women’ playbook is to smash all these particular person parts collectively at pace. In principle, that seems like quite a lot of enjoyable. In actuality, it’s quite a lot of enjoyable, but it surely’s additionally about discovering out if the remainder of the world can take as a lot discordant chaos as Lunny and Macieira can. “Our tolerance for clashes is kind of excessive,” Macieira says. “When issues do, we’re like, ‘It really works for me.’”

Recording for Who Let The Canines Out started solely per week after the second Oxfordshire session, with Daniel Fox returning to steer the method after earlier punching in for the 2024 single God’s Nation / Physique of Mine, which looking back seems to be like an vital blueprint for album one when it comes to each course of and palette. “We didn’t have quite a lot of time for the songs to simmer,” Macieira says, noting that when they had been within the studio they virtually needed to untangle them.

No stranger to a little bit of mayhem because of his day job as bassist within the Dublin post-punk outfit Gilla Band, Fox steadily known as Lunny and Macieira into the management room to determine precisely what was happening structurally amid the carnage. “We had been enjoying various things always,” Macieira provides. “That wanted refining.”

However carving out actual property for every factor was all the time going to symbolize a sophisticated balancing act on condition that Lambrini Women’ method isn’t about subtlety in any form or kind. A part of the expertise is being overwhelmed by data, that means that any feeling of fussiness may turn into terminal. “Refining” is a relative time period.

“One factor that I really like about recording with Dan is that he is aware of easy methods to make my bass sound like a jet engine,” Macieira says. To wit, veteran mixing engineer Seth Manchester – recent from collaborating with sonic envelope-pushers Mdou Moctar and Large | Courageous – later noticed that he’d by no means labored on a report with this many bass tracks.

Three’s A Crowd

Fox and Macieira ran her go-to Mustang and dwell pedalboard by way of three amps directly: an Orange AD200 and a few Fenders in a well-worn Bassman and Macieira’s personal Rumble Stage 800. “Folks get humorous about modelling amps but it surely sounds fucking nice when it’s paired with a head and an 8×10,” she says. “It provides some actually good definition to the sound. There was a DI in there too and a few room mics. On some songs I overdubbed with a Moog, including a bass synth beneath. There was lots happening.”

Lunny additionally selected to maintain issues within the realm of tried and examined by calling on her Mustang by way of an Orange Rockerverb for nearly each notice. “I additionally used a Starcaster on some components, simply to provide it a bit of heat and physique,” she says. “My Mustang is so scratchy. However I didn’t actually have my work reduce out for me in comparison with Lilly.”

At this level, Macieira jumps in. “You do have two jobs within the band, although,” she says. On paper, or within the liner notes, it’s true that Lunny does have two jobs. However, actually, it’s extra like three: guitar, vocals, bedlam. “The great factor [about being bass-first] is it frees Phoebe as much as exit and do all of the wild shit she likes to do dwell,” Macieira provides.

Cease studying this and lookup a photograph of a Lambrini Women enjoying a present – you’ll see Lunny on the ground, within the crowd, on prime of the group. As she instructed NME final 12 months, “In case you come and see us dwell, I’ll most likely come into the group and punch you”. That may be a cornerstone of their outsized, in-your-face method to enjoyable and that means, as vital as any ringing chord, needling lead line or crushing bass drop, and collectively they understand it. Transcend the eye-popping presentation, peel again just a few gnarly layers, and the important thing factor in all of that is belief in each other.

“Our sound is actually chaotic and I discover quite a lot of catharsis in that,” Macieira says. “However there was one occasion throughout Particular, Completely different the place, within the outro, we go extraordinarily atonal on the very finish. We’re type of ascending, abandoning all musical scales. That was one thing I actually struggled to get my head round for ages. I needed to depend on Phoebe to be like, ‘No, no, it really works, it really works.’”

Lambrini Women’ Who Let The Canines Out is out on 10 January by way of Metropolis Slang.