Virginia Wing - Private Life review

The Guardian 0

(Fire Records)
Singer Alice Merida Richards combines her calm sprechgesang with rage against millennial misogyny, offset by rich earwormy electronics

Most of punk’s sonic hallmarks calcified into cliche long ago, but if there’s one trope still able to induce the shock of the old, it’s the dissonant, direct, stubbornly wonky female vocals that animate the work of the Slits, the Raincoats and X-Ray Spex. On Manchester trio Virginia Wing’s fourth album, frontwoman Alice Merida Richards evokes their thrillingly relatable voices with her own – a jerky, unmediated sprechgesang that combines vacant disaffection with rumbling rage.