L7

(Translated from my original Italian text by Gemini and Piero Scaruffi)

The L7 (a play on words standing for "hell's heaven") were the first exponents of "foxcore" to gain recognition from the male/masochist environment of punks and metalheads.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1986 by Suzi Gardner and Donita Sparks (both guitar and vocals, the former from Sacramento, the latter from Chicago) and Jennifer Finch (bass, a Los Angeles native, formerly in Sugar Baby Doll with Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland),

On the debut album, L7 (Epitaph, 1988), Gardner's compositions favor a mixture of rock and roll, punk rock and heavy metal, with her hysterical screams in the foreground, wild rhythms and rather predictable riffs (Bite The Wax Tadpole, Cat-O'-Nine-Tails), while Sparks is responsible for the "harder" and more sarcastic moments, such as the epileptic thrash-metal of Metal Stampede, with a strong parodistic connotation, and the great Sabbatical dance of Uncle Bob, full of guitar noise. The girls also know how to set up the pow-wow of Snake Handler, slow and hypnotic, with echoes of the Clash, and the grunge of Let's Rock Tonight, with echoes of Black Sabbath and Kiss. The album is lush, and aligns them more with Babes In Toyland than with Hole, because of the musicality and immediacy of the compositions.

Although Gardner's songs are more original, Sparks' loud and irreverent attitude is more fashionable, and is therefore rewarded on Smell The Magic (SubPop, 1991). Shove, the key track, is thus an ironic nursery rhyme complete with a chorus, propelled by a heavy metal engine. Even in the tracks where a patina of rock and roll remains, such as the wild Fast And Frightening, Just Like Me and especially 'Till The Wheels Fall Off, everything is submerged by the violence of heavy metal and that disdainful air. Although they are angry tirades in the style of the Sex Pistols, with if anything a strong influence of Motorhead, the effect is to accentuate the similarities with the Runaways, their most immediate predecessors in Los Angeles. In a few places (Deathwish), the darker mood of depressed punk rock dirges surfaces instead. Their trademark, however, is still the Walpurgis Night hullabaloo they manage to set in motion starting from minimal pretexts.

Bricks Are Heavy (Slash, 1992) attempts to transform their music into a fashionable "grunge" (and to transform them into the Nirvana of foxcore), in contrast with their legendary live performances, where they show a more unrefined aggressiveness; but their grunge is never as serious and doctrinal as that of the boys. Other rock and roll witch-chants appear on Wargasm (their most political track) and Mr Integrity; but the average tone of the work is given by the metallic aberrations of Diet Pill and Slide, in which the group succeeds instead in coining a staggering blues-rock, as if they wanted to update Born To Be Wild to grunge. The most interesting aspect of this style is that of Scrap, which takes up the rhythmic, macabre and android refrains of Black Sabbath, which is also the same as One More Thing (written by Finch), one of the highlights, a sort of slow and solemn voodoo-psychedelic dance.
The masterpiece of the album (and perhaps of their career, and one of the masterpieces of the entire foxcore genre, and of the entire decade) is however Pretend We're Dead, an anthem like those not heard since the 60s, with a crescendo melody and a martial cadence, and cryptic lyrics ("when we pretend that we're dead/ they can't hear what we�ve said").
Gardner is in the shadows; Sparks is now the master of the group. The record as a whole is, however, a bit less edgy than the debut, and thus misses a historical opportunity (one that, to be clear, Babes in Toyland did not miss that same year).

Hungry For Stink (Slash, 1994) further increased the reputation of the group, whose sound is not only the most masculine of the foxcore bands, but is also one of the most mature and complete. While not boasting a classic of the magnitude of Pretend, the record showcases their varied personalities, oscillating from the adolescent nursery rhyme of Andres to the psychedelic "flight" of Talk Box, worthy of the Grace Slick of White Rabbit. Far from repeating themselves, it is only in Can I Run that one hears again the irresistible cadences of Pretend We're Dead. The punk fire that ignites all their music comes to the fore in the tribal and visceral pow-wows of The Bomb and Shirley, shouted in a manner worthy of Frightwig, and in the wild invective of Freak Magnet, worthy of Hope Nicholls.
The L7 are above all very skilled at "stealing" from rock classics to build the most compelling harmonic frameworks: Stuck Here Again advances with the pace of Warren Zevon's Werewolves Of London, She Has Eyes sinks into beat and garage-rock, and Fuel My Fire, the best of the lot, delivers a solid boogie punch a la ZZ Top (though it was co-written with the Cosmic Psychos). The most interesting relic is the novelty Riding With A Movie Star, in which Joe Satriani-style solos, rock and roll, synthpop, and African polyrhythms are reshuffled. But this is one of those cases where theft becomes art, great art.

The spirit of L7 is that of early punk: viscerally anti-establishment, sarcastic, confessional; to which should be added, if anything, the grit of early rock and roll and a thread of android neurosis a la Devo.

The Beauty Process: Triple Platinum (Slash/Reprise, 1997), without Jennifer Finch, returns in part to the wild sound of Smell The Magic in Bad Things and Must Have More, and The Masses Are Asses is even savage punk-rock; but too often it slows down into slow chart-ballads. Off The Wagon and Moonshine are party songs that belong more to the tradition of the B52's than to the tradition of heavy metal.