Lambrini Girls Are Here to ‘F— Up’ the U.K. Music Scene: We Want to Be the ‘Madonna of Punk Rock’
19.10.2023 - 13:07
/ variety.com
Lambrini Girls, an all-female and non-binary rock trio who take their name from a potent low-budget wine popular among British teenagers who don’t know better yet. The Faroes are so far north that in July the sun only sets for an hour or two, and the locals traditionally stay out until all hours during summers (the festival’s evening-closing acts start their sets at around 3 a.m.).
Still, the Lambrinis have the seemingly thankless task of going on at 1 a.m. on this chilly night on the festival’s second stage, located on the soccer pitch of a local school.
Just a couple dozen people stand in front of the stage, drinking local beer and smoking cigarettes. All of a sudden, deafening feedback, drums and loud power chords burst forth from the speakers, and a guitar-brandishing blonde in a black slip — Lambrinis singer Phoebe Lunny — is yelling at the crowd, bossing them to look alive.
The band has barely started its first song before she’s out in the rapidly growing audience, ordering them to stand up, then sit down, then stand up again while her two bandmates keep pounding away. The crowd obeys: The group’s combination of chaos, commands and confrontation — not to mention Lunny’s utter fearlessness — is everything a classic punk rock show requires, and within just a few minutes the crowd has grown to more than 100 people, and then more.
As the first song comes to a shambolic close, everyone assumes Lunny, who’d abandoned her guitar onstage, is still bumping around in the audience. But suddenly, from behind and above, come the words “‘Ello, I’m up here now!” She’s standing on top of a wooden roof that covers the soundboard at the back of the pitch, 15 feet above the crowd, with the first rays of the rising sun behind her.
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