Babes In Toyland
Nemesisters (Reprise)
by Marc Hirsh
Babes In Toyland
Nemesisters (Reprise)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in the Public News, June 21, 1995
Babes In Toyland's Nemesisters is noisy and cruel when it wants to be loud and brutal. There's a difference. Nemesisters shows a band that doesn't know what it wants to do with itself. The two best songs are dead first and dead last, and everything in between is a nightmare, perhaps by design. It's something of a cheap tactic: put the slow burn of "Hello" at the start to get the listener's attention, leave them with the memory of the spirited rendition of Sister Sledge's "We Are Family." It would be a great single. Unfortunately, there are all those other songs to deal with.
The core of the album alternates between dumbly plodding and mindlessly blazing through the band's originals. There's even democracy in action, as drummer Lori Barbero and bassist Maureen Herman take over vocal duties from singer/guitarist Kat Bjelland, resulting in the pointlessly repetitive "Drivin'" and the annoying "Middle Man." The piece de résistance is an appalling cover of Eric Carmen's "All By Myself," which is so wretched that it calls the band's instrumental competence into question.
The lyrics are no better and should have been shot. Too many of the words on this album are cutesy puns, kinda like the name of the album. We get "deliciousweat," "sugar coated phallusy," "angelicanteen" and the like. This gets old fast. The band especially like the word "Elijah," (ab)using it throughout "Oh Yeah!" and dragging it through "22" as well.
Take it as a warning that the album cover depicts the band as a combination sideshow attraction/horror movie monster. Whatever the end result is, it's not pretty. Enter at your own risk.