Editor’s Note: This CD comes packaged with some great custom 3-D poster art!

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MP3: The Degenerettes – Truck Drivin’ Girlfriend

Lou Reed sang in 1969 that “no kinds of love are better than others” and I’m not inclined to agree–as Dante demonstrated in Purgatorio, there are plenty of variations on love gone awry–although I think what Lou really meant to say, more precisely, was that no acts of consensual fucking are better than others.

The Degenerettes (Baltimore’s all-girl, self-proclaimed “queer art rock power trio”) don’t sing about fucking.  Not in the kitschy way that Elastica managed to make sound cool…there’s no songs about groupies or doing it in the backseat of a Camaro. Nor do they slosh around in the hyperbolic, gory detail that Babes in Toyland kind of scared you with, no “Swamp Pussy” or “Spanking Machine” here. The nastiest they get is the occasional jokey metaphor like “I want me an all-terrain girlfriend, mountains of desire, valleys of sin.”  Given the cesspool of mindless sexuality on display on TV 24/7, that would have the Degenerettes splashing their feet somewhere in the shallow end. They don’t treat homosexual love with the kind of coquettish coyness that Kevin Barnes sometimes fantasizes about, and that’s certainly for the best because the last thing the world needs is another person writing songs like Kevin Barnes.

All of which describes what the Degenerettes don’t do, because in some ways it’s more interesting to write about than what they do do.   Read the rest…