The Slits

The Slits were one of the most original bands in the history of Anglo-American music. It would be reductive to place them solely within the punk/post-punk framework, since the scope of this English ensemble's innovation goes beyond the musical aspect, extending into the artistic and cultural sphere.

First and foremost, the Slits were the first all-female band in the world of rock or punk not to adopt the musical style of a band made up of male musicians. In her wonderful memoir "Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music Music Music, Boys Boys Boys" (Faber & Faber, 2014), guitarist Viv Albertine recounts the process of defining her own sound in a constant effort - fully in keeping with punk DIY ethics - to turn the music being created into a vehicle for subjectivity, forging her own voice in a world whose stylistic formulas were dictated by men.

Becoming musicians likewise translated into a conceptual effort: a refusal to sound like previous or contemporary bands, and a determination to present themselves, visually too, as "new" musicians and women, different from the female or male models around them. In the toxic climate of 1970s England, a society in decay - where women were still relegated to the kitchen and punks were shunned even by teds and skinheads - the Slits launched their cultural revolution backed by that broad, plural punk scene which became fertile ground for personal expression; and backed too by friends such as Mick Jones (guitarist of Clash and Albertine's longtime partner), John Lydon (frontman of Sex Pistols and PIL) and Don Letts (Roxy DJ, filmmaker and future manager of the untamable band).

The explosive alchemy that led to the creation of "Cut", the band's debut and masterpiece, is the result of influences, life experiences, encounters, friendships and wounds. But it's also the whirlwind of an overflowing vitality and a performative energy generated chiefly by Ari Up and Viv Albertine, the band's two driving forces, who steered "Cut" toward its most original compositional solutions. The two musicians could be considered not only iconic but archetypal figures of rock, much like other artists they themselves went on to inspire, including Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth, Ciccone Youth, Body/Heat), Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, Julie Ruin) and Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney, Wild Fang) - two of whom, like Albertine, have gone on to publish a memoir.

In 1976, Ari Up (Ariane Forster) was a fourteen-year-old of German origin, the daughter of a singer and a progressive-minded woman, raised in a household steeped in music (in 1979, moreover, her mother Nora would marry another musician: Lydon). She was the only member of the band with any musical training, mainly classical, and learned to play guitar from Joe Strummer. With a natural flair for performance and a passion for reggae, Ari developed a singing style in which she accentuated the harshness of her German accent within her English vocals, pairing her musical trademarks with eccentric looks and ritual dances that became a signature of the band's live shows.

Albertine, on the other hand, was born in Australia and grew up in London alongside Jones, Lydon and Sid Vicious (with whom she formed The Flowers of Romance), also hanging around with figures like Johnny Thunders (New York Dolls, The Heartbreakers), Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren (whose clothes, from their brand SEX, she would wear). Her influences are the most disparate: from animal calls to John Cale's viola, from the Beatles to Yoko Ono and Patti Smith, from Low by David Bowie (Rca, 1977) to Sun Ra's "Space Is The Place" (Blue Thumb, 1973).

The lineup was rounded out by Tessa Pollitt on bass and Palmolive (Paloma Romero), former drummer of the Flowers of Romance, who left the Slits before the recording of “Cut” to join the Raincoats, making way for Budgie, drummer of Big In Japan and future member of Siouxsie & the Banshees and The Creatures.

In 1977 the band supported the Clash's White Riot Tour alongside Buzzcocks, Prefects and Subway Sect. Before “Cut”, the Slits had recorded a Bbc session for John Peel and had gone back into the studio, for the first time since signing with Island, to record their own highly personal version of Marvin Gaye's “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (Tamla, 1968), complete with an irresistible groove in the style of the Contortions. Production of “Cut” was entrusted to Dennis “Blackbeard” Bovell, a dub-reggae musician close to Fela Kuti and the man behind Y by the Pop Group (Radar Records, 1979), another debut-masterpiece and another seminal album in the history of post-punk. Bovell fell in love with the Slits' music and, just as he had done with Pop Group, took them to record at Ridge Farm Studios in Rusper, in the West Sussex countryside.

The farm became the ideal place to channel and define the Slits' sound into a carefully balanced set of musical components - dub, reggae, punk, funk, rock, noise - built on a spare texture made up of just a few timbral elements (essentially drums, bass, guitar and vocals). A source of inspiration for the band was Dionne Warwick's interpretations of Burt Bacharach's songs. The final result of the sessions was ten original, fun tracks, none of them running over four minutes, for a total of just over thirty minutes of music. Fully in keeping with punk ethics.

Listening to the album means stepping into a musical kaleidoscope that moves from the tribal ska of “Instant Hit” – marked by the near-absence of drum cymbals and embellished by Bovell's flute lines – to the intricate funky-reggae groove of “So Tough”, from the punk-funk of “Shoplifting” to the ironic noise-making of “Newtown” – whose groove is created by Bovell using a glass, a spoon and a matchbox – from the deadly folk-then-rock progression of “FM” to the squared-off, off-beat riffs of “Ping Pong Affair”, from the grotesque surf-rock of “Love Und Romance” – with its dissonant piano – to the “melodic pop, Slits-style” of “Adventures Close To Home”, the Tessa-sung track that closes the album. Special mention goes to the single “Typical Girls”, which became the band's manifesto thanks above all to lyrics that address gender stereotypes with a (self-)ironic and (seemingly) light touch (“Don’t create/ Don’t rebel/ Have intuition/ Can’t decide”).

The album's lyrics draw on the everyday experiences of the four band members' lives – boys, friends and assorted life episodes – starting with the splendid “Instant Hit”, written with PIL's Keith Levene in mind (“He is a boy/ He’s very thin/ Until tomorrow/ Took heroin/ Don’t like himself very much/ ‘Cause he has set to set to self-destruct”). Irresistible and original in “Cut” are the backing vocals, poised between classical style and street-level shouting, which counterpoint Ari Up's main melody, serving – both lyrically and structurally – as a collective body supporting the heroine through a shared momentum, much like the female chorus that backs the actions of a modern-day Lysistrata in a play by Aristophanes.

Completing the masterpiece is the album's artwork, a photo series shot by Pennie Smith that captures all the wilderness of The Slits' music and the spirit of the farmhouse sessions, with a cover image immortalising the three musicians in the garden, covered in mud and wearing nothing but loincloths.

The Slits' exuberance and flair became so legendary that they caught the eye of a director like Derek Jarman, who cast them as a gang of vandals in the splendid "Jubilee" (1978) – a role the band didn't particularly embrace – alongside Adam & the Ants and Wayne County. The spirit of their performances and their stunts, like the cover of "Cut", was instead captured on Super-8 film by Don Letts, who immortalized the London punk scene in the essential documentary "The Punk Rock Movie" (1978), in which the band appears alongside Clash, Sex Pistols, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Generation X, X-Ray Spex and others.

The Slits' musical trajectory lasted only a few years (1976-1982), but their legacy and influence on other artists is incalculable: from the birth of the Raincoats to the start of Neneh Cherry's career, not to mention the Riot grrrl movement and all those female artists whose work is unthinkable without the London band, such as Bjork, Gwen Stefani, or Beth Ditto. From 2005 to 2010, Ari Up and Tessa reformed the band, a reunion that Viv did not take part in. A director, singer-songwriter, writer and mother, in those same years Albertine embarked on an individual artistic path that is still being written.

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25/08/2019