She Pleasures Herself - Fetish

Do you like She Wants Revenge?

That sounds like an awkward question to ask, considering that the album in this review isn't by that band, but it really has everything to do with it. If you like She Wants Revenge, you're going to like Fetish by She Pleasures Herself. I'm not going to say that She Pleasures Herself is trying to copy their sound, or that they're a straight-up tribute band, but the line 'She Pleasures Herself' is in fact a line from the She Wants Revenge single "These Things".

She Pleasures Herself is a trio from Lisbon, Portugal, and I am damned happy I found this album. While not perfect, I enjoy a great number of the songs quite a bit. I saw the name of the band and immediately had to get my hands on the copy in the promopool after checking their Bandcamp, only to see that someone else had snatched it. Luckily, I got them to give it to me and here we are. 

Fetish is the trio's debut album and it's an impressive one. The overall sound of the sort of darkwave/goth rock that sounds like what you see people in black t-shirts making out to in dark clubs in seedy B movies. A bit of surf-rocky undertone with depression and the need to fuck laid on top of it. Like The Cure if they had surfboards.

The stand out track on Fetish, for me, is most definitely 'Dance With Her'. The light synthline backing the song is a pleasant change amongst the rest of the album, with the lyrics being the most catchy on the album. It's mostly this song and the first song on the album, Time, that pushes this album up to it's rating.

The main problem I have with this album is the overall sameness that a lot of the tracks seem to have - that could both be a positive and a negative, depending on how you look at it. The album flows extremely well from beginning to end, but there isn't enough distinct differences to most of the songs to make them stand out enough on their own. 

Also on the album is a cover of Red Zebra's 'I Can't Live In A Living Room'. Having never heard the original, I just went and checked it out while writing this review. I can safely say that I much prefer She Pleasures Herself's cover over the original punk song.

Overall, like I said earlier, this is a damned solid effort. It'll set you back 8 Euros (approximately $8.97 USD at publication time) on their Bandcamp page. Go give it a listen.