Screaming Females - Castle Talk
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
It's impossible to work up any great enthusiam for Screaming Females’ album, Castle Talk. Despite their name the New Brunswick trio aren't the intense riot grrl troupe you might expect but instead ply their trade with a pretty unexciting brand of grunge. Most easily comparable to Johnny Foreigner in their make-up (2 lads 1 lass) they couldn't be further removed in terms of lack of excitement.
Whilst the album cover's fairly funky, with its (possibly) Picasso horse on a yellow background, the contents of the little silver disc within leave a lot to be desired. Herein are 11 songs that fail entirely to elicit any emotional involvement on the part of the listener and yet will likely never even suffer the fate of being cheapened by use in the soundtrack of an awful film (see Eels in The Switch) because they've nothing even to offer the casual ear.
'Laura & Marty', for the opening 10 seconds, promises much but past that it might as well be 4 Non Blondes trying to revive their career by pretending to be L7 circa 'Shove'. The song might be about injecting drugs, if the interpretation of 'hardlining' is correct. Way cool ... 'I Don't Mind It' pretty much speaks for itself. An apathetic ode to possible suicide, but maybe not today. 'Boss' is simply a slow bore-fest. 'Normal', with it's Pixies-like opening, again shows short-lived promise but soon degenerates into a brainless thrash-a-thon for the most part.
It being as painful to write about these offerings as it is to listen to them the torture ends here as you have the general idea by this point and there's no point in putting you off music completely. This review has in fact taken weeks to write due to the need for extended periods of musical rehab directly attributable to exposure to this release. Thankfully that's not a chore that will be repeated again and with any luck Screaming Females will call it a day and take up nine to five jobs.
