Babes In Toyland
Nemesisters

THE REVIEW

I categorically dissociate myself from the unformed mass of critics who deem the album in question mediocre. Certainly this third LP by Babes in Toyland sounds less original than the previous "Fontanelle", but it is a very arduous task to surpass what, in my opinion, can be considered the masterpiece of foxcore.

"Nemesisters" offers excellent melodic cues, starting from the opener "Hello", where the voice of the legendary Kat Bjelland becomes soft in the verses and then "moderately" rises above it all, culminating in a splendid whispered bridge that suddenly accelerates the track, collapsing onto a sorrowful instrumental interlude. The second track, "Oh Yeah!", is no less. It opens with the highly effective drumming by Lori Barbero (whose so-called "tribalisms" will be revisited by Sleater-Kinney in their later works) which leads to the general grunge atmosphere that permeates the piece. Next is "Drivin'", composed and sung by Barbero herself. This track is essentially a loop, as Barbero repeats only two phrases throughout its entirety, which, when read with particular attention, prove to be quite eloquent. In "Sweet '69" Kat Bjelland resumes her unique way of screaming and asserting herself with a nervous and original guitar style, in the, so to speak, more commercial episode of the album.

After the despair of "Surd" and the enchanting atmospheres of "22", comes the listening of "Ariel", more akin in sound to "Fontanelle" than to "Nemesisters". The tragic atmospheres, Bjelland's psychopathic screams, Barbero's melancholy backing vocals, and a "ruffled" bass line make it the best moment of the album. The lyrics of "Ariel" are rather incomprehensible, like most of Kat Bjelland's lyrics, dictated by her distorted psychological imagery. If in previous works the lyrics had a clearly stated main objective (the figure of the mother, which is the key to understanding the leader's inner frustrations), they now appear confused and disjointed.

Worthy of mention is the decent vocal performance by bassist Maureen Herman ("Killer On The Road"), still light years away from Kat Bjelland's talent, but also from the more modest Barbero, from whom another composition can be appreciated, "Middle Man", a blues-punk that will be slavishly copied by 7 Year Bitch in their "Deep In My Heart". In fact, the bassist of 7 Year Bitch evidently plays according to Maureen Herman's paradigm (listen to "Gato Negro", an album by the aforementioned 7 Year Bitch, to believe). Therefore, "Middle Man" should be counted among the peaks of the babesintoylandian production, despite being a rather underrated track.

Bjelland finally delivers two vocal masterpieces, "Memory" and "S.F.W.", which once again bring "Fontanelle" to mind, for the vocal style indeed, for the angry atmospheres and a vague metal influence found in them. However, the final trio of covers disappoints. Absolutely avoidable are "All By Myself" and "Deep Song", sung a cappella by Barbero. However, the lo-fi version of "We Are Family" deserves at least minimal consideration. Probably performed as a joke, it turns out to be pleasant and almost worthily closes the album.

With "Nemesisters" Babes in Toyland consistently refined their art and more precisely the aspect of the lyrics, rather "clean": in fact, only a couple of "shits" appear and the phrase "so fucking what", which should have been the real title of "S.F.W." but apparently the Babes preferred the acronym. Apart from this sort of self-censorship, many aspects of "Nemesisters" should be praised, especially the experimental approaches combined with the more pronounced blues insights compared to their early works.