Lydia Lunch

I came to Lydia Lunch via Foetus, The Birthday Party and Einsturzende Neubauten and I've followed her relentless, remorseless path through contemporary music ever since I heard her gasps and drawls on a Thirsty Animal bootleg cassette I bought at a Yeovil car boot sale back in the late 80s.

Lydia's a kind of alt-Courtney Love, spikier, more intelligent, sicker and slicker than Courtney'll ever be. She's never even looked like selling out; something about her hack-haired, deep-throat sex drawl seem to circumvent the whole idea of popularity, though I'd imagine she's always had her male admirers, if only those closet pervs who stared too long at the cover of Stinkfist and imagined they were Clint Ruin.



Yep, did that. Just for a second. When I was 17 I imagined one day i might ask her out. Glad it never came to that.

She's often played the cabaret queen, done 'Spooky' with a sexy twang etc etc but something about Lydia just seemed too dirty and down to really play it postmodern. From the early days in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and 8 Eyed Spy (when she sounded 17 going on 38) to her later solo albums (and not forgetting a great recent album with The Anubian Nights) Lydia has slashed a distinctive, much untravelled path into reality, doing what she wants, when she wants and how she wants and never once falling into a category that she couldn't drag herself out of. Her new solo album sounds greater than ever and there are plenty of tracks at her homepage, including this fantastic spaghetti western slur-ballad which ought to have been soundtracking the blind Johnny Depp shoot-out in Once Upon a Time in Mexico:Once Upon a Time in Mexico:

Lydia Lunch - Solo Mystico