"Ashes" is a jangling slice of tongue-in-cheek garage pop from The She's

20 June 2018, 10:52 | Written by Amelia Maher

(Tracks)

(The Shes)

Cheekily entitled All Female Rock And Roll Quartet, The She's second record unashamedly prods fun at the sexisim of the music industry that still insists on highlighting its apparent surprise every time women decide to form a band. The album is a masterclass in fun, well-crafted garage pop songs, with "Ashes" standing out as one of the album's high points.

"Ashes" is a perfect example of how the San Francisco-based band have developed their sound, balancing out a healthy dose of bluntness with infectious winding melodies that add together to create a clattering explosion of garage pop excitement. They also count tUne-Yards’ Merrill Garbus among their fans, and Garbus even became a supportive figure during the making of the album, providing encouragement and counsel, which has evidently had no bad effect on the band's continual upward projectory.

"Ashes" is a track that writhes around in perpetual motion, where the guitars twist and bend in and around each other, ringing out whilst lead singer Sami snarls, smirks and altogether holds the fore, presenting the band's fantastical attitude in all its splendour.

Speaking on the surreal, and unabashedly fun visuals the accompany the infectious, Hannah Valente explains how important it was for the band to get their mates involved, saying "This video is very close to our hearts! First of all, we wanted our friends to direct, shoot, and star in the video. We knew we just wanted to get as many people we loved into one video as possible. That was how the concept started. As a band we joke around about the "sassy" delivery of the words Sami gives, so we thought it would be really funny to see a bunch of our friends pretend to lip-sync the song.

"With the help of the director Max we all agreed to take a "picture day" angle with the video, kind of copying the intro of the TV series Freaks and Geeks, and asked everyone to sort of dress up like they would have in middle school (which we all know is not the best time for anyone's sense of style). In the end, we are just so happy to have a video highlighting friends of ours who are all talented in their own ways, and were nice enough to partake in all kinds of silly choreography and other shenanigans the day of the shoot. We hope watching the video people can tell just how much of a good time we all had making the video."

All Female Rock And Roll Quartet is available on Bandcamp now.