Saturday 23/04/05 The Suffrajets @ Rock City, Nottingham

Whoever said girls couldn’t play guitar needs a big fat slap.  Whilst Mr. Gallagher and co. revel at the prospect of yet another bank-balance-swelling, run-of-the-mill album, tonight confirms Girl Power™ is gloriously alive and well. Tonight The Suffrajets come on like a bunch of kittens, strappy-topped and short skirted, and promptly claw rock city to shreds.  If image is as important as the music these days, then there's a market here to be collared, as throughout the set you start to wonder why you can’t take your eyes off a group of girls who are doing their best to make your ears bleed. 

This reviewer would go as far to say The Suffrajets sound like what would happen if some of the best alternative rock bands of the last 15 years or so had been born female.  Former Babyshambler Gemma Clarke is the female reincarnation of Dave Grohl - drum solos and almost maniacal vitriol included -  whilst lead singer Alex Gillings screams, hushes and howls like Kurt Cobain may have done if he’d had breasts and longer hair.  Flanked on either side by Kim Deal-like riff mistress Claire Wakeman and demure bassist Vicky Kingston, The Suffrajets look and sound like some kind of nineties American alt-rock wet dream.  

It’s a vision that the music follows to a rule.  The quiet/loud of ‘Distinction’, sweeping from girlie harmony to full-on screaming takes Rock City around the throat in some kind of forced emancipation, whilst new single ‘Sold’ is bursting with hard-rock energy, culminating in a burst of guitar chucking, feedback drenched anarchy.  It’s a tougher Breeders having a scrap with Bikini Kill, tight, hard riffs and a shed-load of rock and roll attitude. There has always been a shortage of all-girl rock bands; the heavier side of rock is especially surrounded by an overdose of testosterone.  It about time the balance was redressed, whilst their contemporaries might be more Avril than Brody, The Suffrajets really do rock like most girls don’t.