
Lambrini Girls have released their long-awaited debut album Who Let The Dogs Out. The Brighton-based duo of Phoebe Lunny (vocals/guitar) and Lilly Macieira (bass) have spent the last few years on a tear in more ways than one. Who Let The Dogs Out bottles everything wrong with the modern world and shakes it up. If peppering political songs with humour is like sticking a sparkler in some bread, then their debut is like a fireworks display in the factory itself: strange, dangerous, exciting, and it rips through a laundry list of social ills.
Making a reputation as one of the best live bands to come out of the UK this side of IDLES, Lambrini Girls’ combination of blunt-force punk, scathing social commentary and barbed humour has garnered comparisons to Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear, and seen them share bills with Gilla Band, Shame, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, Iggy Pop and more. Released in 2023, their critically acclaimed EP You’re Welcome harnesses that live energy into six flamethrower tracks that tackle everything from lad culture to transphobia. Encapsulating their approach in a single image, the cover art features a cartoon pile of shit on fire.
Written in two short bursts in rural Oxford against the clock, their full-length debut Who Let The Dogs Out is a raw distillation of Lambrini Girls’ anger, energy, and charisma. They got the bones of it down in the first session, which saw them lock into a routine of waking up, going for a run, writing until 7PM, then cooking and eating dinner together before going to bed and doing it all over again. The second was arguably more chaotic. “We had something like 48 beers, a bottle of vodka, six bottles of wine, two bottles of Lambrini, rum and tequila…” Phoebe recalls. “During the first session we ran out of booze, which is obviously illegal, so for the second we did a big shop and stocked up. We somehow managed to drink through all of that in a week.”
“You know how Fleetwood Mac almost dedicated Rumours to their cocaine dealer? I think we should dedicate this album to all the booze we bought at Tesco.” laugh Lambrini Girls.
Despite being a high pressure situation, the combination of Dutch courage and a ticking clock helped play into their strengths. The end result is raw, instinctive, and straight from the gut. “Because we had such little time, I had this switch in my brain that just went ‘I’ve just got to let these songs be what they want to be’,” Lilly explains. “In the first session it was very much like, ‘no, this has to be really thought out,’ but by the second I was like, ‘I’ve got to let go a little bit, see what comes out and just see it through.’ Trust the process kind of thing. That was a really big part of writing this album. It’s also a big part of why the energy is similar to our live shows, because it’s just how we are.”
Release: January 10, 2025, City Slang