Material Girls, Atlanta's Fabulous Glam-Punks, Force A 'Residual Grimace'

Material Girls' glam-soaked, goth-smeared rock and roll struts and stumbles like a fish-netted pair of legs breaking in new heels. The punk ensemble from Atlanta released a promising EP last year via Henry Owings' venerable Chunklet label housing four songs dripping in danger and sweat, like a whiskey-swigging Nick Cave partying with Captain Beefheart. It's music for the darkly lit corners of a humid night.

The band is set to release its debut album Leather midsummer, just when the cotton starts to stick to your skin no matter what time of day. "Residual Grimace" opens the album with a guitar riff that haunts a swinging rhythm section, a campy Cramps-ian waltz that bleeds into a ragtag hot-jazz horn section that bursts from a descending bass line. And while Material Girls certainly evoke the darker shades of late '70s, early '80s punk, its twisted cabaret is in direct lineage with Smoke, the mid-'90s weirdos of Cabbagetown, which, at the time, was a derelict haven for artists of Atlanta. Material Girls shares a gleeful morbidity and creative abandon with Smoke, and expands that growling beauty with a wild eye.

Leather comes out July 2 via Irrelevant Music (U.S.) and EXAG Records (Europe).

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