Petrol Girls - 'Cut & Stitch' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Intro

2. The Sound

3. Tangle Of Lives

4. Interlude (Q&A)

5. Big Mouth

6. Interlude (Looming)

7. Monstrous

8. No Love For A Nation

9. Skye

10. Burn

11. Talk In Tongues

12. Interlude (They Say)

13. Rootless

14. Weather Warning

15. Naive

This not an album for the faint hearted. It's more to the Punk side of Punk Rock but with a level of intensity that many bands would struggle to match mixed with an Indie Rock sound at times.

It’s not always an easy listen but I suspect that’s intentional, Petrol Girls are clearly intent on challenging their audience, making them think and not giving anyone an easy ride.

I didn’t always enjoy it, but I always appreciated the intent behind it. It felt me like this is a band experimenting and pushing the boundaries of their ambition

When they do get it right on songs like 'Big Mouth', 'Skye', 'Rootless', 'Naive' and 'No Love For A Nation', it's tremendous, the mixture of almost preaching in some of these songs together with the quality playing and singing is challenging, intriguing and highly enjoyable. 'Skye' in particular connects on an emotional level which some of the more shouted songs just don’t manage.

The album actually gets better as it goes on. I don’t know if the band just got more confident as it went on or just more willing to try things, not everything works, but when it works it works incredibly well. I wanted to give this five out of five but some of the songs just didn’t work for me so it’s a four, but really a four and a half.