NOBRO - Set Your Pussy Free
Dine Alone Records
Released Oct 27th, 2023
How does one set one’s pussy free?
According to the (almost) titular first track of NOBRO’s recently released Set Your Pussy Free, “you let your hands fly high, ‘cause you’ve had enough, you wave them all about like you just don’t give a f*ck!” Highly cathartic—though one suspects there’s more to pussy freedom than that. The song’s shameless cheerleader chant (“N-O! B-R-O!”) kicks off the album with anthemic energy.
NOBRO have been on the Montreal scene since 2014 and, having toured extensively and opened for bands like Blink 182 and Alexisonfire, are officially a Big Deal. The band combines a garage- and classic rock sound with punk fervour, a Riot Grrl ethos, and a whipsmart sense of humour.
The album’s first single, “Let’s Do Drugs,” is an uproarious ode to dirty teenage imbibing, describing the itching, puking, and medicine cabinet-scavenging that defined the early party days of kids much cooler than this reviewer ever was, while “Delete Delete Delete” chronicles—with icky and hilarious familiarity—helpless nights glued to the computer, fighting random strangers, forgetting who you are, gossiping, and crying.
“A.I. Sexbots,” on the other hand, is less sexbots and more treat-yourself: the song offers an unexpectedly wholesome manifesto about living one’s truth.
“I Don’t Feel Like It” and “Who the Hell Am I” convey the struggles of twenty-something insecurity and belated rebellion, with lyrics like, “I thought I’d be a better person by now,” and “I got dues to pay, but can I just pay ‘em later?” expressing the disappointments of adulting and temptations of quiet quitting (or loud quitting). The latter includes lines like, “Always at the party, but never quite having fun,” and “Maybe it’s me cause I never wanna fit in,” speaking to the loner outcast in us who wants to grow up but not to compromise. And maybe we shouldn’t have to.
Punk has always fought conformity, and NOBRO celebrate a rejection of vapid self-improvement in favour of filling the void with pathological love, preteen party drugs, and, obviously, rock and roll. Which brings us to “Where My Girls At,” a supremely catchy work of pop-punk storytelling that illuminates the process of forming an all-girl band, an act necessarily powerful, political, and joyful.
According to their bio, the album name was conceptualized the day Roe V. Wade was overturned, and while most of the tracks themselves don’t have an overtly political message, the whole album expresses a politics of joy—of rebellion achieved through acts of celebration, creation, despair, and destruction. If NOBRO has an agenda, it’s to get you to go out and start an all-girl band—or whatever your “all-girl band” is.
(Actually, I don’t know if “all-girl band” has become a dated term, and I suggest, as a universal replacement, “no-bro band.”)
The final songs veer away from thrashy, wordy garage punk and toward radio-friendly party rock. The guitar riff in “Nobody Knows” evokes imaginings of the band messing around on Sabbath mashups hours into a drunken band practice, and “Let’s Get Outta Here” leaves you unsure whether you want to make a run for it or double down and dance.
Prevalent in these tracks is the theme of escape—from hometowns, dead-end jobs, no-bro-band-less existences—and of finding oneself, or at least committing to the search. They close with another anthemic bop: “Gimme More (Party Through the Pain),” in which they issue their demand for love, and more of it! With a release like this, they’re sure to receive.
- Ava Glendinning
