The joyful defiance of Lambrini Girls

Lambrini Girls' vocalist/guitarist is picturing how “No Homo”, a song from the band’s forthcoming debut album, will go over during their live show. “We were literally like, ‘let’s rip off The Hives, ‘Hate to Say I Told You So’, but then also School of Rock and also The Chats,’” she explains. Lilly Macieira, whose formidable bass chops complete the duo, elaborates: “No Homo – it’s our ‘No Smoko’.”

Lambrini Girls have always telegraphed their irreverent, give-a-fuck sense of fun and humour alongside sincere political commentary, never coming across as glib even as they confront such sensitive topics as misogyny, trans rights, class disparity, police brutality – you name it. Making this work in a live setting is one thing, when you’re all in the same room, Lunny demanding to know if you’re a Queer legend, a collective raging against the machine – but pressing that juxtaposition to a record is an entirely different achievement. Who Let The Dogs Out? is that achievement, something only the two of them – with the help of Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox behind the desk – could pull off. (Although Lunny does suggest that Mr Blobby’s work is of similar calibre.)

Who Let The Dogs Out? is very much the Lambrini Girls you know and love and your Conservative relatives warn you about, but its scope is more vast than we’re used to from the Brighton outfit. Lunny aims her whipsmart potty mouth at the deliberate deterioration of the working classes’ housing standards on “You’re Not From Around Here”, nonchalantly reading out gentrification’s by-the-book definition part way through, as though emulating the cold detachment of city planners and supposed ‘urban pioneers.’

Elsewhere, “Special Different” is an uncharacteristically poignant account of neurodiversity. Then there’s Lambrini Girls’ first breakup song in the form of “Love”, a stormy, violent rager led by Macieira’s blown-out fuzz bass. And the closing track, “Cuntology 101”, sounds like nothing they’ve done before – a goofy synth-pop bop whose outrageous but empowering lyrics immediately disqualify it for radio play.

“We did want to write like one pop song – we were dead set on it,” Macieira explains of the latter, which she dubs the album’s “Kinder Egg surprise.” “I downloaded Fruity Loops [FL Studio music software] and everything, and I was trying to figure out how to use it. But to learn how to use that program in a day whilst you’re also recording was a little bit ambitious. So it was definitely lucky that there were these two bad-as-fuck [Behringher Model D] synths in the studio that we could kind of write with organically.”

This more experimental approach LG took with Who Let The Dogs Out? is partly the result of the album as a format – there’s more runway than they had on the You’re Welcome EP from 2023, for instance. As Macieira explains, “If you write three or four songs like [classic Lambrini Girls], then you’re going to start looking for something else, which is what we did, and it worked.” Those “classic” Lambrini Girls songs include the frantic opener “Bad Apple”, lairy live staple “Big Dick Energy”, and “Filthy Rich Nepo Baby”, whose bass part sounds like it’s crawling out of the speakers into your room, oversaturated with mouth-watering distortion.

But part of their pushing-the-boat-out approach is down to confidence, too – they believe in what they’re doing. “We gave ourselves leave to kind of piss around with it a little bit, and then also, just kind of naturally, me and Phoebe touring loads together and spending loads of time together and generally just progressing, evolving as musicians, is what made it sound a bit different,” Macieira reflects of the album’s dexterity.

All of this – School of Rock and hipster hatred, anti-breakup dins and zany synths – is united by the band’s attitude. The way they go about things – their delivery – is their USP and magic. Huggy Bear were furious at cops and hacked away at gender norms; Bikini Kill pioneered a unison of unapologetic feminism and scrappy, make-it-up-as-you-go-along punk rock; Brighton peers CLT DRP take an uncomfortable microscope to sex and abuse via their heavy synth-punk style. Lambrini Girls take notes on all of this but don’t sound like any of them.

“I think the thing that ties the album together is how much we like to have fun,” Macieira posits. “We like to be messy and have a party… it was also meant to be like a bit of balance as well. Obviously, a lot of the songs are quite heavy and talk about serious subjects, and as much as we are a serious and political band, we’re also absolutely ridiculous and very silly.”

The only album title they could choose, then, was a totally meaningless one (their words). While Lambrini’s influences christened records in more earnest ways – Reject All American, Our Troubled Youth, Without the Eyes, for example – Phoebe and Lilly went with Who Let The Dogs Out?. “We were like, ‘let’s put that one on the back burner, see if we can find anything better,’” Macieira reflects. “Obviously we didn’t, because there isn’t anything better, because it’s a fucking hilarious album name.”

They also didn’t have much time to dwell on the name, to be fair, nor on the album cover, a snap of pool-party carnage, shot last-minute in LA. After all, it’s been a ludicrously full-on year for the duo, who have been pretty much permanently on tour. When we chat, they’re about to head out supporting IDLES before flying to New York for a week and then back home for a BBC1 piece.

“It’ll be Christmas Day and they’ll be like, ‘guys, can you just squidge this one [interview] in please? It’s for this Finnish radio station, it’s gonna take 20 minutes of your time, I know you’re having Christmas lunch,’” Lunny says. She jokes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a Finnish DJ wanted to give up their Christmas dinner for a chat; this year, Lambrini have well and truly captured the continent, whipping up frenzied crowds at more festivals (even the button-up showcase ones) than you knew existed. Notwithstanding all the major UK haunts (End of the Road, Glastonbury), they’ve hit countries such as Iceland, Croatia, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Belgium, and The Netherlands (their favourite place to play; “the Dutch are just crazy bastards”), with Eurosonic on the calendar for January 2025.

With all of this going on, Lunny and Macieira recently gave up their day jobs – because they logistically had to, not because they could afford to – and don’t mince words when discussing how the music industry is more often than not pitted against the musicians, hence a song like “Filthy Rich Nepo Baby” and the anger aimed at trust fund phonies interloping on DIY spaces. “Everyone in the music industry apart from the musicians is making money,” Macieira laments. “And the musicians, they’re obviously the whole reason the music industry exists in the first place. People who don’t labour take the fruits of the labour of someone else,” she says, referencing a quote by American civil rights activist Kwame Ture that they used as an interlude on the album.

It’s heartening, then, as capitalism eats up more and more of the industry, speeding up its real-world enshittification, that there are beacons such as the European Talent Exchange (ETE). An initiative of the Eurosonic Noorderslag Foundation and based in The Netherlands, the platform is dedicated to the internationalisation of European music, aiding European artists by getting them on festival bills across the continent, helping to spread the messaging of a band like Lambrini Girls.

They made the duo the home page photo on their website – it’s a shot of Lunny in the crowd, as she is wont to do, cheered on by a guy wearing a “FCK NZS” shirt. The stats that follow speak for themselves: since 2003, the ETE has helped 2292 European artists from 36 countries to play 5676 shows at 197 partner festivals in 44 countries. Lambrini Girls played at eight of those festivals, including Iceland Airwaves, Øyafestivalen, and Pukkelpop – or as Lunny puts it: “It’s been a lot of beer drinking this year, Hayden, but I don’t regret it; I’ve had a great time.”

Of their time in the studio, on the other hand, Macieira clarifies that “it was kind of more just casual sipping.” To track the album, the two of them holed up in Eastbourne, Brighton’s more reclusive, frailer neighbour. “You don’t have many distractions in Eastbourne,” Lunny quips. “It did mean that you were just in a room for like a fucking week on end, just trapped in this place.” The upside was that their creativity flourished thanks to that headspace and literal space. “You can jump on your instrument whenever you have the slightest inkling to do so,” Macieira says, noting that the gear is permanently set up and you never have to fumble around with cables and amp settings. “I think those moments are really, really crucial, because you could get an idea randomly when you’re making avocado on toast, and then it’s immediately accessible for you to play out that idea.”

It’s about bringing the spontaneity and impulse the band are known for into this more rigid world of click tracks and overdubs – into everything they do, in fact. They mean what they say, they are uncompromising in how they say it, and they haven’t once watered down their message even as their audience and platform expands.

Theirs is an industry filled with pros and cons and contradictions, someone else always having the last word – on one level, it’s a label or DJ or journalist; systemically, it’s a filthy rich nepo baby, it’s a white cis guy who won’t shut up about riot grrrl. When Lambrini are involved, they should always get the last word, and before long, they will: “Free Palestine. Trans lives matter. Free any oppressed country in the world. And we stand for a united Ireland.”

“Oh and fuck colonization.”