The Branded - She's My Woman

Warning: this music is highly infectious! Sweden’s new garage-rock kings deliver everything you want from a style-conscious, but not nostalgic retro band – pulverising guitars, screeching, snotty caveman singing, maximum grooving and guaranteed male chauvinistic lyrics. The Troggs, Namelosers and Bo Diddley are key words in this fuzz-crossword puzzle. But their influences are so cleverly dissected and reconstructed that you will just find yourself dancing (and sweating) in front of your gramophone. Hailing from Malmö in southern Sweden, they are fronted by Englishman Lee Tea (former bassist with garage-punk maniacs Thee Exciters) who is responsible for the raw vocal and crushing guitar sounds, while John Krantz on bass and Anders Hansson make up the driving rhythm section. After forming, just a couple of short years ago, the band hit the studio and quickly released their debut single, “She’s

My Woman”, in a quantity so limited (fewer than 100 made it to the general public) that it sold out within days. The stomping future classic, “You Got The Hurt”, on Dirty Water Records, was their second release. A review said: “Those in desperate need of your required fix of raw rawk‘n’roll will do yourselves a mighty favour by hooking up to this shoe-shuffling ’60s punker. A slamming slice of curdling beatnik blues boogie is what’s on offer. Indelibly cast with the spectre of the Standells, this lo-fi fuzz-fleeced babe shimmies and shakes like a recently unearthed ’60s nugget. And the flipside is a real diamond, sounding like a primal variant of the Troggs, laced sumptuously with an ass-shaking dirty swamp-infused growl that’s undercut with a grooving beach party twang that sounds ripe to take centre stage in its own freakbeat teen flick. Ridiculously essential!” A full-length album soon followed. A review said, “The honest truth is that there’s nothing better than some simple garage rock trio pounding out great tunes that one drinks, sings along with, and stomps their feet to simultaneously. Although tried and true, it’s only really good if one puts all they have into it and doesn’t give a fuck about what anyone thinks. Although many garage rockers do great performances, their recordings often fall short by missing the live vibe. The real proof of greatness is when the band can emit that from a recording. The Branded succeed much more than most acts on this front.” Such was the sucess of their two Dirty Water single and album that more and more people were clamouring to own a copy of their debut release. In fact, the demand for us to re-issue “She’s My Woman” was so vociferous that we were forced to take notice.

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