Cherry Glazerr’s second album warbles somewhere between lazy-guitar synth pop and the spikey post-punk of The Slits, marrying both in a hazy, adolescent mess.

The band have definitely matured since their debut Haxel Princess, written when frontwoman Clementine Creevy was just 14 years old, but they retain the frenetic, awkward energy of adolescents. Creevy delves into her feminist principles for lyrical content, with tracks such as ‘I Told You I’d be With the Guys’ offering a rallying-cry of female solidarity. In the same vein, she reserves the right to be filthy and age disgracefully on ‘Trash People’.

The album has shades of fizzy grunge pop and sounds reckless at times, but features deeper moments of climax on the single ‘Nuclear Bomb’. Here, a soaring synth-drenched chorus quickly demonstrates greater levels of musical maturity than their previous work. Equally, the eponymous closing track ‘Apocalipstick’ is a devastating slice of sludge, expanding the band’s dynamic range far beyond the minimal grunge-pop of their past.

While the strength of the album’s singles illustrates the band moving forward, the album as a whole lacks some of the charm found on their previous work, partly because of the band’s line-up changes and subsequent polishing of their sound. However, it’s still a fun record, and still represents the spirit of youthful abandon we’ve come to expect from them.

Sam Dillon

[image: i-d.vice.com]