Women is a band from Calgary, Canada. They are a band that I have seen attached with a very large number of words combined together to fit their sound, for me, I would describe them as “Garage-chill-Atmospheric-Punk” with similarities to The Velvet Underground and The Zombies.
Public Strain is the second album from Women, and is this case; I find that the LP has certain similarities of other 2010 releases such as The Mynabirds and Microdot Gnome. While also having some qualities that can often be heard in a record by Bauhaus too.
What I liked most about this LP is how dynamic the variety was, Women for this album seem to have used odd chords and synth noises that would in other cases be considered an annoyance, but because of all the extremities used on Public Strain, it helps create a wonderful and distinct sound which is very pleasing to me, because on paper it sounds like this LP was going to be terrible, but in reality it is enjoyable and memorable too.
All the songs on this LP seem to have a certain charm about them, whether that has been garnered from the use of self recording (or low-fi if you want to label it) or from plain skill, all songs seem to make me personally want to listen out for more of it, to listen intently encase there are any more subtle layers added to them, which on this record, would not come as a surprise. A great example of this is track 5 on the LP “Bells” which is just an instrumental recording of one synth mixing together very dreary and depressing sounds over one another, despite how that sounds, it just has this certain quality about it that makes me want to listen throughout it, the way it sounds like the synth is crying, but has been wrapped around the arms of a strange warmness that seems to exuberate from the track.
What I also liked about Public Strain is that the variety was not just restricted to the songs, but every song on this LP is changed throughout them too. For example, the track “Narrow With The Hall” starts off in typical Women style of creating atmosphere, before a big rush abruptly arrives and instantly increases the tempo of the song, making it sound completely different at the end to how it started.
However, this is where my biggest problem with this album abruptly arrives too; this album does begin to get repetitive in some parts of every song too. Despite the wide use of variety on each song, there always seems to be one part where Women go back to using the picking of certain strings, the slow strumming of these somewhat exhausted chords, the basic “dum dum dum” drum beat, and finally the airy vocals (which seem to be a trend for many albums released in 2010) that just makes it seem as if Women were settled down with using the same “safe” sound to keep their songs going.
Another slightly less significant problem that I have with this album is that it can only attract a specific type of person who would want to listen to the LP in it’s entirely at once. This is a problem because it makes Public Strain, and Women as a whole, inaccessible for anybody to be able to listen.
Do you want to listen to a pop record? Don’t listen to this.
Do you want to listen to an adrenaline fuelled rock album? Don’t listen to this.
However, do you want to listen to a “low-fi” dark, wandering, garage album? Then DO listen to this!
Overall:
Public Strain is without doubt, the only album released this year so far that doesn’t pay any attention to the “rulebook of music” and I commend Women for that. The use of picking the NO’s of music, mixing them together and producing an LP like this is quite fantastic really. There are still problems that need rethinking through or could be disregarded completely
but despite that, I give Women – Public Strain a light 9 out of 10.
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