Recommend Me Some High Energy (guitar based) Bands With Female Singers

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been listening to the Eight Arms to Hold cd by Veruca Salt lately, and it makes me sad that Nina Gordon left the band all over again, since I adored their music. It seems pretty unique to me, but make Dopers can recommend something similar for me? I’m looking for two things in recommendations:

  1. At least some of the band’s music features guitars as prominently as VS’s “Volcano Girls” , " Straight" or “Seether”.
    And
  2. The female singer(s) sound, um, there’s not tactful way to put this, female. Some of the heavier music by women that I’ve heard have singers that you can’t tell are women merely by listening to their songs.

I eagerly await your recommendations, thanks :slight_smile:

2

Flowing Tears is really good, but I’m not sure if this is what you are looking for.

3

Letters to Cleo
Jane Wiedlin
Elastica

Those are the three that pop to mind, but I am sure I’ll remember more good ones soon. Chicks rock!

4

Guano Apes. High power, didn’t even know the lead singer WAS a chick until I saw her.

And she’s HOT

5

Hole pretty much has that whole thing going, but whether you can put up with Courtney Love and her “I’m a fucked up hollywood princess” take on life is another matter.

Old school Hole is Ok though.

6

first and foremost:

PJ HARVEY… anything. particularly the Self Titled album, or the latest “Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea”

also
Sugarcubes (bjork’s band prior to her electro-reinvention, great rock band)
Pretenders
No Doubt
Some of the more Rockin’ Ani DiFranco albums, like “Not a Pretty Girl”, or my fave “Dilate”
Sleater Kinney
Liz Phair rocks sometimes
The Breeders (or even better: Pixies stuff that features Kim on Vox)
Velocity Girl stuff is probably sort of hard to find these days, but they were one of my favorite Girl rock bands, noisy Girl guitar pop… heavenly :slight_smile:

more as they come to me…

Chris

7

You came to the right place; I looooooves me some girl bands!

–Fuzzy, a four-piece from Boston fronted by two women on vocals and guitars. I’ve seen them live twice, and contributed some guitar tab transcriptions to the website linked above. Great, upbeat power-pop stuff. Not as gritty as VS, but equally fun to listen to.

–Bubble, a rockin’ little band led by Share Pederson on guitar and vocals. She used to be the bassist in the 80s pop-metal band Vixen. Bubble is about halfway between glam and hard rock, with some great melodies and harmonies.

–Eleventh Dream Day. I don’t think they’re a going concern anymore, but they were a big college band in the 80s and early 90s. Lead singer is drummer Janet Beveridge Bean.

–The Muffs. This is stretching your criteria for feminine sounding lead singers a little bit, as Kim Shattuck can go from quiet and girly to throat-ripping screams in a single song. She does pretty simple, melodic pop with the guitar aesthetic of the Ramones. Tons of energy.

Those are a good start – I’ll post more as I think of them.

8

Oh, how could I forget my beloved Tiger Trap? Love, love, love them. Three girls, punk band, lots of fun. It’s really too bad they broke up. They’re excellent.

9

Elastica
Lush
Curve (well, maybe)

10

L7 maybe. They’re pretty hard, and not anywhere near as radio-friendly as most of the other band mentioned here.

I also miss Veruca Salt with Nina Gordon. “Resolver” just didn’t seem as good as “American Thighs” and “Eight Arms”.

11

I have Sister Seven’s album “This the Trip”. It rocks pretty hard, and meets your criteria. They have another album, which I haven’t heard.

If you want some of the “classics”, there’s Heart, The Pretenders, and X. (To name a few off the top of my head.)

12

Yeah, I’d back up Elastica and Liz Phair. Also try the Lunachicks, they’re keepers.

And don’t forget the queen of them all…Joan Jett. Her first 3-4 albums (Bad Reputation, I Love RnR, Album, and Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth) absolutely define tough girl rock and roll.

Hey! The VGirl! Believe it or not I was roomies for 2 years with Brian from VGirl!

You may touch me.

13

I have a few more, and others have mentioned a lot of my faves (how could I forget Letters to Cleo and Velocity Girl?)

Magnapop, from Athens, Ga. Their first album Hot Boxing was produced by Bob Mould, and they only released one other before breaking up, but both are great guitar pop.

Mary’s Danish, the now-defunct band from LA. They had dual lead vocalists in Julie Ritter and Gretchen Seager, who were capable of some outstanding harmonies. Guitarist Louis Gutierrez wrote the song “Walking Down Your Street” for the Bangles. The band did every style: Rock, funk, folk, pop, ska, and whatever else.

Lush, a 90s shoegazer band from England. Some of their stuff is high-energy, some is dreamy and ethereal. But their vocals were always hypnotic and beautiful. Their last album, Lovelife, was more rock-oriented; they broke up after their drummer committed suicide.

Up-and-comers The Yeah Yeah Yeahs from New York. I don’t know a lot about them, but I like what I’ve heard.

Jale, an all-female four-piece from Halifax, Nova Scotia. (Actually, they may have a male drummer.) Jangly, upbeat guitar-pop. They have at least two lead singers, maybe three, so there’s a variety of vocal sounds. Their second album, So Wound, is particularly worth getting.

14

You might want to check out Republica, tho’ they may not satisfy the guitar criterion.

15

You’re gonna list Joan Jett without listing The Runaways (JJ and Lita Ford)? For shame!

Lessee here…there’s Sonic Youth (well, the songs with Kim singing), Skunk Anansie, Pretty and Twisted (Johnette Napolitano from Concrete Blonde), and The Donnas.

I guess if you want the singer to sound like a female, then Kittie is out…

I’ll toss in a couple of "me too"s for Sleater Kinney, PJ Harvey, and Letters to Cleo.

JonTheMusicCritic

16

I thought about The Runaways (I have most of their stuff) but I’ve always thought that Joan perfected what The Runaways were reaching for. The Runaways had so much managerial interference and ‘svengali-ism’ that I think it took away from what they were able to do.

17

I see you already know about Veruca Salt, and others have suggested Letters to Cleo and The Donnas, so since I’m fresh out of recommendations I’ll mention my own stuff instead!

I play guitar in a band called ** Increment ** that, for lack of a better way to describe it, is hard rock with a female singer. Instrumentally influenced by a whole gamut of music, from Tool to Metallica to Rush to classic rock, with a singer along the lines of Gwen Stefani or the singer from Letters to Cleo (drawing a blank on the name right now!)

There are some mp3s up at our site and we finished recording and mixing a CD a few months ago that is just waiting for artwork to go to the duplication people. Unfortunately, the mp3s are of older stuff, whereas most of the songs we’ve written since (some of which will be on the CD) are more high energy, might be more what you’re looking for. Also, the mp3s were all recorded on a digital 4 track, even the two horrible live recordings, as opposed to a real studio like the cd.

Check it out, hopefully you’ll enjoy! Meanwhile, I’ll have to look into some of the other recommendations in the thread…

-Jon

18

Flowing Tears is really good, but I’m not sure if this is what you are looking for.

19

hmmm, I came back to my computer and hit refresh just to have it post again. I apologize for that.

20

This is a real “Love her or hate her” suggestion, but Patti Smith wuld be my answer to “joan Jett” as the proto-badass chick rocker.

Then again, i know people (whome I otherwise respect) who find her unlistenable.

If nothing else her new best-of is mostly on the rockin’ side. Its called Land. and it kicks ass.

Chris (dancin’ barefoot)