Is this a Jim’ll Fix It? It’s still difficult to take Ms Scout Niblett entirely seriously. This is yet again an album of raw emotions and gall, and that’s about it. It’s really the sound of her wanting to achieve something, rather than actually achieving it. It’s built on very basic art-rock (nee punk) principles, namely that nobody can tell you that you can’t. It’s unclear whether it is intentionally obnoxious, aspiringly unconventional, or whether it is genuinely the sound of her following her heart, artistically unconstrained to the last. But the thing is, by the time the album has run half of its course, it has proved strangely rewarding. It is unlike almost anything else you will hear this year, and not because of any innovation, but because of a rare, brutal honesty.
She is most intriguingly listenable her strange one-woman-band mode, her voice, her harmonies and her repetitive drumbeats alone become quite intoxicating, primal really, on ‘Fuck Treasure Island’ and ‘Valvoline’ (the latter consisting of her shrieking “I am the driiiiiiiiiiver!!” over the fastest 4/4 beat she could probably manage at the same time). There is of course guitar, strummed, bent, plucked, twanged, etc. as a bed for her random carelessly stretched poetry, as on the bulk of ‘Pompoms’ before the bluntly butchered drums make a re-entrance, ‘Relax’ and ‘Wolfie’. She is like Sleater Kinney literally dismembered before your eyes.
But it’s not all solo blundering, she does have some help this time round – a hard surge in the way of progression, which is of course easy enough to spot. The tight, pounding drums making an entrance at the suddenly apocalyptic close to ‘Hot To Death’ for instance. ‘Lullaby For Scout in 10 Years’ sounds exactly like it was recorded by Steve Albini in his Illinois studios, which it was, erupting into a latter-day throat-bruising Cobain meltdown; drums, distortion, anarchic coherence, everything. So, maybe in 10 years she will have got there. ‘Good To Me’ is low slung Jesus Lizard with empathetic melodic sweeteners. It’s silly talking of progression though, she does nothing to surprise us or herself. But she does occasionally sound like she wants to be in a band. Which is a bit different.