Today, Boise-based post-riot grrrl trio Blood Lemon have announced their debut self-titled album coming out April 23, along with a driving, environmentally-charged single & video for “Black-Capped Cry.” Premiered with Under the Radar, the song draws inspiration from the call of black-capped chickadees living around singer/bassist, and first female member of Built to Spill, Melanie Radford’s house. “One day I kept thinking about one of their calls slowed down, playing over and over in my head, almost trance-like,” she says. “So, with that idea in mind, we wrote this song as an aid to that call, as though it was a call for help.” The result is a song that skewers both the lifestyle of limitless consumption and white colonialism, punctuated with a video juxtaposing a pure, natural reality and an industrialized, post-apocalyptic one.
Slow-burning guitars and pounding drums build until exploding into a wall of heavy riffage on the track – elements found throughout the band’s debut album and previous single “Burned”. With the mastering work of Mell Dettmer (Earth, Sunn O))) and Black Mountain) and inspiration from Sleater-Kinney, Hole, Earth and The Breeders, the resulting LP is heavy in many ways. Tackling the modern state of discontent through topics like climate change, American politics, social justice, and navigating adulthood as women, Blood Lemon have deftly created their own gripping alternative sound. Simply put, these women shred.
The classically trained Boise three-piece — singer/guitarist Lisa Simpson (Finn Riggins, Treefort Music Fest), singer/bassist Melanie Radford (Built to Spill, Marshall Poole) and percussionist Lindsey Lloyd (Tambalka) — formed in 2018 out of a medley of mutual admiration, a cover band called Mostly Muff and a unanimous love of Kim Deal and ‘90s riot grrrl music. They had no idea they would soon be writing a perfect soundtrack to kick off 2021. What they did know was that they were eager to play music with their fellow women; they wanted a sound informed by ‘90s stalwarts like Pixies, Sleater-Kinney and Veruca Salt; and they were ready to get political. If you, too, find yourself ready for the same, you couldn’t ask for a more apt soundtrack than Blood Lemon’s cathartic good time.
Blood LemonTracklist:
1. Bruise
2. Whistleblower
3. Cut
4. Burned
5. The Stone Castle
6. Master Manipulator
7. Black-Capped Cry
8. One More Time
9. Leave the Gaslight On
