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Mar 13, 2014 Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia By Paul Bridgewater

There’s a pleasing raucousness in Manchester all-female four-piece PINS that many will miss on their first listen of Girls Like Us, their self-produced debut release, recorded in just a single week. Filtering the grit of their hometown—solidified somewhere between early punk and late ‘80s Factory Records—against a more transatlantic DIY ethic (think Ramones-era CBGBs, a more energised C86 or even Best Coast, who the band supported on tour last year), it’s a debut that both dips and dives heavily but benefits from a strange lack of artfulness.

Stripping away the pretense and bombast that other bands of their ilk might wear overtly, they have nothing but unchecked fuzz rock as their parlance. While the album suffers from claustrophobia at times, tracks like “Howlin’” eke out a formula that makes them shine—it’s a growling, warm jam of a song that always feels slightly out of beat and out of time but never dull on the ear. On “Get With Me,” vocalist Faith Holgate finds a lyric to match the song’s filthy rock glam sound (“I can be anything you want me to be”) but there’s a swagger to the song that shows a talented composer underneath the dirt. It’s enough to make the record both memorable and fun. (www.wearepins.tumblr.com)

Author rating: 6/10