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THE PEELS
(Dim Mak)
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As Liz Phair and Courtney Love learned with their recent commercial duds, bad girls sometimes get spanked even when they’re really good. But sexist prudery probably wasn’t to blame for the local haters who’re said to have driven the Peels from their native Seattle to San Francisco, or for the corporate players who seem to have nixed their rumored major-label deal. More likely, it was way the Peels undercut themselves with received cock-rock swagger even as they rip off every dirty, femme-fronted band from the Pretenders to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. On the first half of this eight-song debut, Judy Miller’s rasp, Lane Rider’s riffs, and the rhythm section’s buzz are nasty and catchy enough to barrel past the dumb lyrics and the musical clichés. But then they sink to the standard cock-rock title "You Talk Too Much" and never recover. So when the San Francisco Weekly reports that the band formed after a terrible blind date between Miller and Rider ("We basically hated each other") and that Miller also once dated the Peels’ drummer and a member of the Strokes, you can’t help thinking that this bad girl is just a really good . . . well, whatever.
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