It’s 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, and I’m smashing shit with Lambrini Girls.
Singer and guitarist Phoebe Lunny lets out a guttural scream as she snaps a vase in two with a hammer. Meanwhile, bassist Lilly Macieira is going at a TV that just won’t crack with an axe. We’re at Smash It Rage Rooms in Southeast London, one of few such establishments in the city, with the plan to list grievances about the music industry — something the Brighton-bred punk duo often do in their songs, on social media and at gigs — while, well, smashing shit. But with heavy-duty protective gear covering our mouths and Limp Bizkit blaring in the background, it’s pretty much amounting to muffled yells.
Still, we’re having a grand old time. At one point, Lunny and I tee up for a sort of beer-bottle baseball: They pitch a glass at me and I shatter it into a hundred pieces with my weapon of choice. A few minutes later, we finally break through the stiff TV and leave what looks like a pixelated bloodstain on its screen. But eventually, red-faced and tired, we decide to exit the destruction — only to find we still have 10 minutes left in our half-hour slot. Turns out, being full of rage is exhausting.
Lambrini Girls know a thing or two about that, having made their name in the U.K. music scene with fast-paced, somewhat abrasive punk songs tackling a variety of issues, from misogyny to TERFs to homophobia. Raucous live shows, led by Lunny’s in-your-face performance style, have led to the band touring for the better part of 2024, including stints in the U.S. and festival slots at Glastonbury and Iceland Airwaves.
During our first interview in October 2023 after the release of Lambrini Girls’ debut EP, “You’re Welcome,” I remember Lunny saying that she highly doubted they would ever play with a band like Idles, whose form of post-Brexit punk put renewed energy behind the genre and has resulted in five Grammy nominations. But in November, they were Idles’ direct support for two sold-out shows at London’s famed, 10,000-cap Alexandra Palace.
“We genuinely didn’t think we’d play with them,” Lunny says as we reward ourselves with pints of Stella at the nearest pub, which is so local it feels like we’re interrupting something as we step inside. Though the first show opening for Idles was a bit slow moving, by the second night “something just fucking switched.”
“We walked on stage at 7 p.m. and the entire venue from the get-go was fucking packed,” Lunny says proudly. “And everyone was like, let’s fucking go crazy.”
It’s these high-energy shows, complete with plenty of moshing and on-stage antics, that have made Lambrini Girls a band to watch. But the strong word-of-mouth and constant touring made crafting the band’s debut album an intimidating task.
“Without flattering ourselves, I think we’re known more for our live shows than we are for our records — up until now,” Macieira says.
Lambrini Girls hope that changes with “Who Let the Dogs Out,” released on Friday via City Slang Records, a sleekly-produced firestorm of an album encapsulating their signature mix of political musings and offbeat humor. Take its name, for example. It could be read into as a commentary on misogyny or, as Lunny jests, “a metaphor for late-stage capitalism,” but it’s really just an inside joke about Baha Men’s 2000 hit that went too far. “We thought it was fucking hilarious,” Macieira laughs.
The 11-track record was written in Oxford during two short breaks from touring, and being up against the clock helped the band discover that they work way better under pressure. “People say you have your whole life to write your debut album, but that wasn’t the case with us,” Macieira says. “We were like, ‘OK, we just gotta do this. Whatever comes out is what comes out.’”
“Who Let the Dogs Out” starts with a bang thanks to “Bad Apple,” a siren-laden tirade on police corruption and brutality backed by an unforgiving breakbeat. Lunny had been trying to synthesize their thoughts on the topic into song since the murder of Sarah Everard by a Metropolitan Police officer in March 2021, but it kept coming out “fucking crap.”
“I was trying to find a way to make an umbrella critique at the whole policing system, but also not in a way which was insensitive, and highlighted different issues,” Lunny says, noting that she’s “aware it’s very easy being a blonde white girly to be like, ‘Police are bad!’”
She continues, “I’m coming from a big place of privilege to critique the police in some way and not feel fucking shit scared about it. I know people from the police who are nice people, but the fact is the system is corrupt and it can be used in any way to make sure that things like sexual assault and murder are totally brushed under the rug.”
Despite its serious start, “Who Let the Dogs Out” soon ventures into the silly with “No Homo,” a track subverting the dated term that’s sure to get crowds going. “I like your face and it’s in a gay way,” Lunny sings over a guitar line. “I promise no homo!” Though it’s meant to be a light-hearted romp, Lunny acknowledges that it all comes back to the “self-deprecation that comes with internalized homophobia.”
“There’s so much guilt and shame still for so many queer people, even if you’ve surrounded yourself in queer communities, like that doesn’t go away,” Lunny says. “If you do like someone and you’re not sure if they like you, you can always be like ‘I’m just gonna joke it off,’ even though you’re kind of taking the piss out of yourself.”
But the mid-section of the album sees Lambrini Girls take on somewhat uncharted territory: getting personal. “Nothing Tastes as Good as It Feels” pulls from both Lunny and Macieira’s experiences with eating disorders, with the title paraphrasing Kate Moss’ infamous 2009 quote — “As my head hits the rim of the toilet lid/ Kate Moss gives no fucks that my period has stopped/ I wish I was skinny but I’ll never be enough,” Lunny sings.
“Beauty ideals and norms just totally ruin your fucking mind,” she says. “That genuinely has had such a harmful impact on my life. I know I slag off Kat Moss in the song, but she was as much a victim of it as anyone else, especially in the ’90s. She was fucking destroyed by the beauty and fashion industry.”
By addressing the topic in a “brazen way,” they hope that the song can help start authentic discussions between friends and online, especially as the “heroin chic” look continues to gain popularity on social media platforms like TikTok. “I just hope it makes people feel less ashamed or embarrassed,” Lunny says. “Because I feel ashamed and embarrassed of my own stuff, and I always will even singing about it. But I just hope that it helps people feel less alone.”
Another song close to Lambrini Girls’ collective heart is “Special, Different,” which details, as Macieira puts it, “the strange, contradicting duality of being neurodiverse.”
“There’s a lot of strength in neurodiversity and there’s a lot of uniqueness. And those strengths are celebrated when they’re beneficial, but then the difficulties are shamed,” Macieira says, adding that it’s their favorite track on the record. “I think that song sums that up really viscerally and I find that very moving.”
Lunny says it was “cathartic” to write from their own experience “going through the educational system and just feeling really fucking stupid.” But she’s still struggling with the idea of letting the outside world into her head through lyricism.
“I fucking hate doing that,” Lunny admits. “It’s gotta be done and it’s good, because I do want to be able to write stuff that’s relatable to other people. But singing about things from a personal perspective is a lot harder. Pointing the finger at yourself is a lot harder than it is pointing it at everyone else.”
Luckily, before things get too serious, the album closes with a song titled “Cuntology 101.” Impressively reciting “cunt” 26 times in just over two minutes, it’s an exercise in reclaiming a once-nasty word that has now reentered the zeitgeist in a more positive form.
“Everything we write is so fucking angry all the time. I wanted to write something that’s celebratory about just being a messy bitch and loving yourself,” Lunny says, adding: “People are afraid because it won’t get played on the fucking radio. Like, sometimes you’ve just gotta take a bullet.”
As Lambrini Girls prepare to go back on tour this spring, including a headlining show at London’s Electric Brixton and another run in the U.S., “Cuntology 101” is one they’re looking forward to hearing crowds chant along to.
“I find it so amazing when people sing along to our songs, and honestly it doesn’t happen that much at all,” Maceiera says. “I did have a moment watching Idles when we were supporting them and just seeing everybody in the crowd singing the lyrics, hands in the air and I was like, ‘I want that.’ I would love it if people connected to our music and listened to our music enough to want to scream the words back at us.”