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Free Kitten - Inherit

Inherit by Free Kitten

4...according to our on Thu 22 May, 2008.

I never thought I'd be sat here reviewing a new Free Kitten album. I thought that band had long disbanded but I suppose everyone is back at it these days. The trio of Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Pussy Galore's Julie Cafritz and The Boredoms Yoshimi were the original girl power group. I'd pay to see them having a bitch fight with the Spice Girls... Some bits of 'Inherit' are okay and you get the poppy end of Sonic Youth coming through but I cant really hear Yoshimi's influence in there at all which is a shame. it's like she just showed up did what Kim Gordon asked her to and got paid. There is one bit on here that I cant even bring myself to play as its so self indulgent it makes me want to go home and and drink bleach. It's like 15 years late... I probably would have liked it when I was about 14. CD on Ecstatic Peace.

A decade and one year ago, Free Kitten released their third album, Sentimental Education. On it, one heard Kim Gordon's vocals and guitar. One also heard Pussy Galore's Julie Cafritz's vocals and guitar. Drums were played by the Boredom's Yoshimi; bass: Mark Ibold, formerly of Pavement. There were guest stars, too, but for the post-punk, indie, noise uninitiated, the draw of this album,--and 1994's "UnBoxed," and "Nice Ass" after it--was less its pedigree than the music's ability to challenge or even stop the movie lies that generally play in all our heads, such as: I am happy. Cut to: my family is whole and happy. Fade to black. Free Kitten's music suggested otherwise. Free Kitten liked fading to black--and, in the process, drawing a curtain over the status quo. Free Kitten told stories about the family dog as well, less in their lyrics than in their sound, which brought Mom to mind, too, but Mom wielding a knife near the neck of the family dog that refuses to run away--or shut up. But that was then. As to now: Free Kitten is releasing its fourth studio album. Titled "Inherit," it reacquaints us with Gordon, Cafritz and Yoshimi. On the disc, then and now are collapsed into the present. And it is our present that is most effected by songs like "Erected Girl," which reminds one of bossa nova rhythms run through a Kosher meat grinder. And then there's "Free Kitten on the Mountain," which amounts to a travelogue of sorts--but through a Lord Buckley-like subconscious mind. In short, the thematic eclecticism evinced in Free Kitten's present work is a movie that doesn't lie, because truth is its standard.

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