She Gets Revenge

She Wants Revenge digs chicks. Not only is their site painted with the many names of their current and former obsessions (a "crush list"), but their songs are bruised from the kinda kicks those many obsessions have provoked.

john hood - she get's revengeAnd from the looks of their videos, chicks dig She Wants Revenge. Snap man Michael Muller shot the cemeteried "Sister" and included two severe heartbreakers; Hillbilly Love lenser Ryan Rickett did "These Things" twice better, with four - count 'em - to-die-for's; and Joaquin Phoenix's direction for "Tear You Apart" strips the girl core down to her very essence. Or does it?

Only She Wants Revenge knows for sure.

And they're not telling. Okay, so they are, telling that is, and showing, every little thing that makes the heart heat up, in the most literary amalgam of electro groove since, well, literary amalgams were set to electro groove.

Like the shorts of Raymond Carver, or, perhaps, a swoon-struck version of Denis Johnson - remember: chicks dig smarts - She Wants Revenge dives deeply into the "minutiae" of the moment. Their MySpace site cites Calvino, who could write with a grain-of-sand's POV, they feel too Robbe-Grillet, who wishes upon the dust that grain left behind.

But, as you might suspect, textualities aren't the only thing stirring with She Wants Revenge. There's something distinctly cinematic to their oeuvre - a certain Roehmerian esthetic leaks all over them and their videos, and there's as well a keen photographic eyesomeness - as portrayed, say, in the shivered still imagery of Richard Kern.

Don't though think for a moment that SWR spends all of its time gazing at girls' still navels, they also wanna see those navels shiver, and they wanna see those navels shake. For that they resort to a concoction that might uncannily be called the hard sweat of digital cool.

John Hood - She get's RevengeTwo thirty-something Valley cats (Justin Warfield and Adam 12) with a pedigree in turntablism, SWR are the sum parts of all that they've spun over the years, and all that they've hung out with and hung on to. No, they do not sound like Interpol. But they do veer very heavily toward Joy Division and New Order. There is in them too a decent dash of Depeche Mode, a healthy slicing of Sisters of Mercy, and a Tone honed well On its Tail; makes sense, that is from whence they sprang.

SWR are also consciously Morodor, and, different but equally, Arthur Baker, the first producers to desegregate the dancefloor to any great degree.

Who cares? SWR survived the '80s once already; they're entitled to revive 'em as they best see fit. What's important is that Revenge serves their dish hot, and that they're not bothered by what the nays say.

More Noir than Goth, black and white with a deadly smear of Love That Red, shadowy and shady, like the most fatal of femmes, this is the tack of 21st century retro-futurists unafraid to wear a dame's name on their sleeve. Ironically or not, she wants revenge and she gets it, at the hands of the men in She Wants Revenge

Photography Courtesy Timothy Norris.