Screaming Females - Rose Mountain - LP (2015)

Labels: Don Giovanni
Review by: MH

Screaming Females is band I’ve been meaning to check out for ages. How convenient then that this should appear in the digital review list. When it came in I immediately downloaded it and stuck it on the iPod…and, erm, that was it. In fact, this was sent in back in January. Sometimes stuff gets lost or forgotten about. Shocking behaviour by me. However, I stuck it on while walking to work the other day and was pretty hooked. This is a pretty big rock record full of swagger, big riffs (the opening riff on the first song had me thinking of L7) and the powerful vocals of Marisa Paternoster. I like the whole thing but if you need some standouts then it’s hard to top the early coupling of “Ripe” which is a pounding rock song with a guitar sound reminiscent of Queens of the Stone Age, and “Wishing Well” which is an absolute corker with a huge chorus. The more vulnerable “Hopeless” is also excellent. My deduction, having missed a good decade’s worth of music by this band so far, is that Screaming Females are a quality rock band – I bet they’re great live too. If I find this record somewhere in Australia I might even buy it.