I would love to claim that I have my finger on the pulse when it comes to new music but that would be a lie. My finger is mostly found scrolling Spotify back to David Bowie’s back catalogue and to my favourite playlist entitled ‘Is It New Wave’ to which the answer is always yes.
Thankfully, not only does Chris have a radar for new music that is good enough for the pair of us, but Bedford Esquires, our local gig venue, brings many amazing new bands to our doorstep. Support your local independent venue if you are lucky enough to have one!
On Friday, we went to see Dream Wife and I fell a little bit in love.
These women can really rock. The legend goes that Dream Wife formed as an art gallery project; a girl group, manufactured as an art installation replete with songs, written and recorded, and their own mockumentary. The final touch to complete this project was a live performance, which just led to more. This is why we find ourselves living in a world where Dream Wife are an actual thing.
The band are far from fake. In fact, Dream Wife are perhaps the most genuine band that I’ve seen in a while. Their engagement with their fans, their ‘bad bitches’ (the most awesome women in the audience, as identified by the band and invited in to an all-female mosh pit with a stage dive by lead singer, Rakel) and the audience as a whole pulls you into their world, attention undivided.
This is punk rock and I believe that this is needed more than ever at this moment in time. Take their song Somebody with lyrics “you were a cute girl standing backstage, it was bound to happen… what you wore and how you bore it so well, what did you expect would happen?”
The refrain, sung enthusiastically and angrily back by the audience, “I am not my body, I am somebody,” looking around, I wondered how many in the young audience had already experienced something to make Somebody feel like a personal mantra.
I did bake a few cakes for Dream Wife – when I can (i.e. when the schedule allows it!) I like to take a little extra something sweet to add to the rider of the up-and-coming bands who stop in at Bedford Esquires. It’s my way of saying thank you for playing our independent venue and saving me a train journey into London.
Let’s face it, a local indie venue like ours is never going to book Adele but, frankly, I’m not in the mood to listen to someone whining over their ex right now… I am angry… and I want to listen to great music by women who are angry too. Women who, on lower rungs of the ladder, are going into a record industry who I hope will treat them in exactly the same way as the boys with guitars.
As I looked around the young women in the audience on Friday, I thought how wonderfully useful the angry little mantra of Somebody could be. Get your daughters into Dream Wife. I’d rather they picked up a few choice bits of bad language and knew their worth than behaved themselves and stayed quiet.
Stay gorgeous!
Cxx
