The Gore Gore Girls

Guitarist Amy Gore, of the Gore Gore Girls, has got her Suzi Quatro down. Not so much in attire (the Gores rock miniskirts and boots in high contrast to the leather jumpsuits Quatro wore in the ’70s), but in those sneering vocals. The admittedly great Joan Jett’s been working that territory for longer than Gore’s been an adult, but Gore’s voice is less nasal and a lot more threatening.

You can hear this for yourself on the Gore Gore Girls’ latest, Get the Gore. Their new label, Bloodshot, has been discreetly trying to ease into garage rock, starting with Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers (the missing link between garage and the rocked-up hillbilly music the label usually releases), continuing with the soulish Detroit Cobras, and now this. And they couldn’t have picked a better band to get trashy with.

In the mid-’90s, pre–White Stripes, Detroit was producing neo-garage bands at a rate of two a week, or so it seemed. The Gores (not to be confused with fellow Motor City garagistas the Gories) emerged in the middle of all this, having lasted through the mid-to-late–’90s before releasing their first full-length in 2000. Like the Ramones, the Gores fuse garage-rock with modern-day punk plus a small taste of the girl-group sound (which, gender aside, the Ramones didn’t shy away from either). They’re not alone, but to paraphrase Chuck Berry, the competition plays it too darn fast and changes the beauty of the melody. The Gores, by contrast, keep the song at an even rhythm and wallow in all that badness. It’s like the difference between a love tap and a punch in the gut.—James Porter