Bambix

Club Matuchek (2004)

Hein Terweduwe

Bambix is a trio with its roots in Nijmegen, Holland and are around since 1988, although from the original all-girl line-up there's just singer/guitarist Wick "Bambix" remaining. They toured Brazil 3 times, got featured on MTV, shared stages with the most notorious bands, play about 160 gigs a year and released 4 full-lengths prior to this one. They signed to Go Kart Europe for the release of this album that was produced by Menno Bakker, one of the giants in these areas. Furthermore it was mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side Music in New Jersey.

Although I didn't expect too much from this band, the 13 songs on this album sounded surprisingly good to me, as for some reason I always associated this band with a much more trashy sound. Instead they manage to pull out some reamarkably catchy and melodic songs with fuzzy guitars that sometimes reminded me of bands like One Man Army or Ann Beretta ("Leaking Fuel", "Coupe Turn Off"), although their sound is not to be pigeon-holed to just one division of punkrock. At times songs tend to go in real overdrive with a hard-hitting energy ("Spotlight", "No. 1"). The powerful and plunky bassplay of Patrick Schappert surely is a big catalyst in this. There's also f.e. the pretty straightforward, more basic rock-sounding "So Sorry Song" and the fast galopping "Flippin' USA" that add even more sound-dimensions. "Jester" is another nice pumping gem of a song. I'm not sure about the woman's age, but Wick's vocals are not sounding "girly" at all; the firm lower and sometimes even a bit soary timbre in her voice to me are rather coming from a riper woman with a certain maturity. Unevitably there's a typically Dutch-English accent in her pronounciation of the words, but it's certainly not as distinct as some of the Southern-European singers. There's some occasional male backing vocals in songs like "Bullet" (which BTW is a really good sing along and shaky song) that either contrast or add well to the leadvocals. Also nice in a few of these songs were the dual female vocals, which I assume both come from the lead-singer.

Considering the recordingpeople involved in this project I'm not sure whether they intended this to be, but the production of this album sounded pretty basic to me, in a way reminding me of f.e. the first album of Face To Face. The drums still have this lively sound as if they were right in front of you, there's no fringes to the guitarsound and the vocals certainly keep their original sound. It's weird that so many female-fronted bands please me this much these days, but this is definitely one of the better European releases I heard in this category. It really is an album full of catchy energy, raw parts mixed with melody and hooks, and topped with some honest forceful vocals. Early Tilt lovers will dig this I guess, although there's more drive in this Bambix sound.