For those of you in a hurry, some quick things of note about this record: the lead vocalist sounds a lot like Bis' Manda Rin (the words "adenoidal" and "bratty" spring to mind). Most of the discernable lyrics offer themselves up as a more risqué interpretation of Karen O's Sheena-is-a-bitch-in-heat shtick-- a High Society to play off the YYY's Playboy. Note the following instructions from "Pretend I'm Sleeping": "I want your baby/ So you'll have to come inside me."
If you've ever heard Weasel Walter's guitar work on the Lake of Dracula album-- chunky, thick, dissonant, frantic-- you might think Sick Lipstick's guitarist owes a tithe or indulgence to Skin Graft for such sincere flattery. But the perpetual nerves that permeate this disc owe their frazzled state to the supposed Now Wave scene of the mid-90s (cf. the Scissor Girls, US Maple, Arab-on-Radar, that group of film-school drop outs opening for Blonde Redhead in 1995 wearing Q-Bert masks and tie-died hospital smocks while playing detuned E chords on guitars strung up with fishing line-- no, wait, that last group sucked ass, nevermind). As much as the supposed Now Wavers owe their MO and livelihood (relatively speaking) to No New York and Screamers bootlegs, Sick Lipstick brush against an equally well defined preexisting pedigree.
This might be a good album for those of you in a hurry, though: no song on Sting Sting Sting wears out its welcome, with each of the twelve tracks working itself out in 3 minutes or less. But the best track just so happens to be the longest: "Thigh-Master I'm Your Master" manages to make a racket that, in epileptic circles, would qualify as "danceable", then builds on the racket to end the song with a convincing head of steam. The other tracks follow a similar path with little variation (though the intro to "10-4 Can You Read Me?" sounds more like something from Dirty than something from Here Is the Is-Not). This isn't a condemnation, though-- Sick Lipstick know what their strengths are, and they ably play to them. The lack of variation in their attack lends the proceedings a strange consistency; "strange" because I don't expect a band taking their cues from the sort of chaos described earlier to qualify as "consistent."
Of course, one's fix for spastic, herky-jerky caterwauling punctuated by vocal catchphrasing might be ably sated by offerings from any of the Sick Lipstick's recent antecedents (Yummy Fur, God Is My Co-Pilot) and contemporaries (Erase Errata & related groups, The Ssion, even the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), or even the Canadian group that gave birth to this particular brand of makeup, the much more spastic and abrasive Black Cat #13, half of which comprises Sick Lipstick. If you're thirsting for this sort of aural abuse, Sting Sting Sting is a fine place to get your fix, but there's a lot of good shit in town right now; you better shop around.
