DREAM WIFE

Social Lubrication (Lucky Number)

Few bands right now besides Panic Shack make picking up an instrument and going on tour with your mates seem like the best time in the world, rather than the penniless drudgery it probably is in reality. Dream Wife are another. On third album Social Lubrication, which the trio had almost complete artistic control over, they’re at the peak of their powers, synthesising play and politics into one fully-realised package.

Singles Hot (Don’t Date A Musician) and Leech remain standouts, the former typifying the group’s sense of scathing humour, while the latter shows off singer Rakel Mjöll’s full vocal range, from low chatter to guttural howls. Honestly, the most downtempo track here, also gives Mjöll a chance to flex these muscles but in a different way – her voice mellowing into sensual, almost soulful melodies that melt into guitarist Alice Go and bassist Bella Podpadec’s echoing chords in whispers and sighs. 

Echoes of Dream Wife’s influences in riot grrrl bands like Le Tigre lurk, but the punk is balanced with plenty of pep, with lyrics directed right at you – yes, you – as though Mjöll is some kind of alt-girl motivational speaker (“If you were in this situation, what would you do? / If not you, then who? / If not now, then when?”). This is a band who believes in radical fun, weaponising self-expression against structural oppression (“What’s it like to be a woman in music, dear? / You’d never ask me that if you regarded me as your peer”), and in music as a pillow-screaming conduit (“Just have some fucking empathy”).  

words HANNAH COLLINS