Don't Create, Don't Rebel

The Slits : Typical Girls

[Purchase]

On September 7, 1979 The Slits released Cut. Originally a fearsome feminist foursome, The Slits supported The Clash on the 1977 White Riot tour along with The Buzzcocks. By no means were they typical girls. Along with thrift shop fashions and wild hair, the band's most memorable fashion trend was wearing bloody tampons as earrings. Learning to actually play their instruments was something they would get around to doing over the next couple of years.

Teenage German vocalist Ari Up was the front woman and on Cut she still sounds like a schoolgirl. Viv Albertine is the guitarist.  Teenager Tessa Pollitt plays bass and future Banshees drummer Budgie steps in to replace the departing Palmolive. By now The Slits have developed a new dub-influenced sound that producer Dennis Bovell accentuates. Punk guitars and attitude meet reggae beats while Up sings about shoplifting (Ten quid for the lot /We pay fuck all ...Do a runner!)

The album was met with critical acclaim. From Smash Hits :

Once the worst band I've ever seen...It's rough and reggae stuff from the wild girls ( may they ever stay that way) -- catchy tunes, fighting lyrics and a powerful personality that leaps right out at you.

From the Village Voice's Robert Christgau, who gave the album a grade of B+:

For once a white reggae style that rivals its models for weirdness and formal imagination. The choppy lyrics and playful, quavering, chantlike vocals are a tribute to reggae's inspired amateurism rather than a facsimile, and the spacey rhythms and recording techniques are exploited to solve the great problem of female rock bands, which is how to make yourself heard over all that noise. Arri Up's answer is to sing around it, which is lucky, because she'd be screeching for sure on top of the usual wall of chords. Some of this is thinner and more halting than it's meant to be, but I sure hope they keep it up.

Regarding the controversial album cover, Albertine shares the story of shooting it in an English rose garden :

We wanted a warrior stance, to be a tribe. We were egging each other on, and the next thing you know we were sitting in the mud, smearing it over each other. We knew, since we had no clothes on, that we had to look confrontational and hard. We didn't want to be inviting the male gaze.

Despite finishing #3 on Sounds, #22 on NME and #32 on the Village Voice's year end polls, and inspiring future female fronted bands of all kinds, the footnotes on this album are rather sad. The Slits apparently never got a cut of Cut, and are still seeking royalties. And that force of nature, Ari Up died of cancer at the age of 48.