Trick Babys

Player (Go Kart)
by Scott Hefflon

At first, I wrote off Trick Babys as Lunachicks clones. That’s certainly not a bad comparison, ’cause I’ll nab at any Lunachicks record or go see them whenever they come to town. The similarities in high-energy punk are there, and they’re on the same label (Go Kart), and they’re released within months of each other. What led me to un-write them off was dissecting the sound and, as horrid as it sounds, reading their bio. Trick Babys deserve to be judged on their own.

In the basement of a Chinese restaurant in NY’s lovely Chinatown, Lynne Von (co-owner of a hip East Village thrift store and former voice of Da Willys) joined with Mitro (guitar), Paul Corio (drums), and Brett Wilder (bass) all from pop-punkers, The Vacant Lot. While Trick Babys combine all the tasty flavors of bawdy and squealing female vocals and punky zest, they also have side dishes of raunchy mid-tempo blues. Throaty and gritty, as if it were recorded in a cat house, Lynne Von’s vocals burst like a chesty madam bellowing at her girls. Mitro’s feline guitar purrs with reverb, hisses with feedback, and shrieks with distorted leads. The guitar sound has a definite psychobilly wildness in its punk rawness. Not as flamboyantly riff-oriented as Rev. Horton Heat, but much the same snarling seedy bar rock sound. In closing, yeah sure, the vox sound like the 4 Non Blondes set to rockabilly punk, but that’s not a bad thing, now is it?