Twist – in session for John Peel – July 11, 1999 – BBC Radio 1 –
Taking it up a few decibels tonight with a John Peel session by the Birmingham UK-based Riot Grrrls Twist. Recorded on July 11, 1999 at Maida Vale Studios for Radio 1.
Twist got started in the 90s as a nod to Grunge with a heavy dose of Riot Grrrls tossed in. They were signed to Fierce Panda Records and have released six singles and a mini-album.
The Guardian’s Betty Clark ran an article on the band’s performance at Camden Palace in London in January of 2001. This might yield some clues:
“Twist make songs for broken-hearted girls who aren’t content to sit in a corner and cry, but choose instead to shriek and plead, determined that if they’re going to hurt, you’re going to know about it. And this time the angst is for real. “I hope you all had a good new year,” Fox tells us. “I didn’t. I ended up beating my boyfriend up, then dumping him.”
If anyone is picture perfect to become a poster girl for riot grrrl power, it’s Fox.
With her long blonde hair alternately framing her face or hiding it as she staggers around the stage, bent forward, her head almost touching her guitar strings during Lay Low, she has the baby face of Debbie Harry, the hoarse vocals of Love and the scratchy attitude of Justine Frischmann, yet is still enough of a schoolgirl to smile sweetly at the crowd jumping at her feet. And, along with her bandmates, she’s a confident and intense performer.
Lead guitarist Vanessa White is all midriff and feedback, her jarring notes during My Love for Amber providing interest among the jagged rock. And while sometimes Twist veer too close to Hole territory for comfort, Fourteen provides a glimpse of a more “chilled-out” route, as Fox calls it, the stage flooded in blue light as her vocals become softer and Lisa Lavery’s basslines get darker.
It proves that if Twist deviate just a little further from the grunge blueprint, they could leave all the comparisons and competition behind.”
Goes well with Saturday night on general principle, maybe not with post-New Year’s hangovers but . . .
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