Album Review: Frauhaus! by Wetdog

The aughts sadly weren't a great decade for women in rock. In the 1990s, women from Riot Grrrl to PJ Harvey made joyously raw, aggressive, and polemical rock, now a much-missed sound. That is what makes Wetdog-- a British all-woman trio whose sophomore effort celebrates their percussive, atonal foremothers like the Slits, the Raincoats, and LiLiPUT-- sound so fresh despite their obvious influences.

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God bless Angular Records – the south London label that gave us [a]The Long Blondes[/a] and [a]These New Puritans[/a] are still putting out wiry post-punk records with an almost perverse emphasis on authenticity. It’s difficult to imagine a better home for [a]Wetdog[/a]. Their 2008 debut boasted 21 songs, suggesting that for this east London all-female trio even quality control represents some kind of lapse in artistic integrity.

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Frauhaus! is like an itch you don’t want to scratch. For the album’s bite-sized 30-minute duration, London-based trio Wetdog jabs, plods, and stammers out some of the best jaunty female post-punk since The Slits or The Raincoats. And while its fair to say that Wetdog exist in the spirit of these pioneering groups, they’re not here to pay homage.

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Released late last year in the U.K. on respected boutique label Angular (The Long Blondes and These New Puritans) and making its way to the U.S. via white-hot Brooklyn-based Captured Tracks, Frauhaus! is the second full-length in 18 months from the all-female London trio Wetdog. Arriving like an estrogen-fueled version of The Fall, the record is 14 tracks of short, angular punk outbursts.Opener and first single “Lower Leg” announces itself with a supernaturally tight bass line and a chorus that’s as obnoxious as it is catchy, a trick the ladies of Wetdog almost certainly learned from X-Ray Spex.

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A still-new band with a ragged niche all to themselves. Mike Diver 2009 Wetdog are all scratch and sniff: guitars antagonising ear canals like itchy cuffs on pale skin, a stink like old liquor on joss sticks and the must that grows on jeans unwashed for a whole tour. The trio – from London but not, operating outside of contemporary convention by not playing EC1 dives thrice a week – released their debut long-player not 18 months ago, Enterprise Reversal lighting up the listening gear of a select few in the summer of 2008.

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