Wild Flag: Wild Flag – review

Every moment of the debut album from Wild Flag gives the impression that its makers – Mary Timony, Rebecca Cole, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss – are raiding their record collections for favourite sounds and having an absolute blast. Romance silences its robust guitars and punchy keyboards so everyone can yelp "shake shimmy shake!" over a crisp handclapped beat. Something Came Over Me has Timony unleashing her inner Bryan Ferry as she celebrates "stereo sound". Boom is a muscular riot grrrl squall that flirts with Toni Basil's 1982 hit Mickey, while Glass Tambourine alternates meaty riffs and squidgy 60s psychedelia. Brownstein's unbridled joy in returning to music for the first time since Sleater-Kinney's retirement in 2006 seems to have infected the band, and positively explodes in Racehorse, six and a half minutes of sleazy, swaggering, knowingly preposterous rock. And because, as they chant furiously in Romance, "we've got our eyes straight on you", it infects their listeners, too.