So why is Le Butcherettes’ Kiss & Kill on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
Le Butcherettes is one of the very best bands that just about no one I know personally has ever heard of. We’ve covered a number of their albums on this here journey through the best 1,000 albums ever, and Kiss & Kill is the very best of them all.*
* Be sure to check out Sin Sin Sin (#155), Don’t Bleed (#256), A Raw Youth (#458), and Cry Is For the Flies (#817).
And the wild thing about that is that Kiss & Kill manages to achieve that feat with a spare offering of eight songs that run just a little over 16 minutes in playing time.
The title track, “Kiss & Kill,” was the first Le Butcherettes song to pop onto my radar – possibly through the now defunct mobile app, Songza, which I still miss quite a bit – and it’s still my all-time favorite of theirs.
It combines a bunch of different things that are directly in my personal musical wheelhouse: punchy garage punk with a sweet, grungy, and catchy guitar riff meshed with outstanding female vocals from the fantastically named Teri Gender Bender.
I’ve easily listened to “Kiss & Kill” many dozens of times since 2008, and I can never get enough.
It’s rock and roll, it’s punk, it’s blowing the roof off of whatever room it’s in (and banging out the garage doors while it’s at it).
It’s a perfect song.
“I’m Queen” is slower and sweetly grungy. And it’s so clear on this one – as is the case with all things Le Butcherettes, really – that their sound, their attitude, and their lyrics are all assertively provocative, no holds barred, seeking no quarter nor giving it.
“For Your Bleeding” manages to be a little thrashier while also having a fun and poppy singalong quality. These are both elements too that are deeply pleasing to your humble narrator.
“Last Tear” is the best song that L7 never produced (and if it’s not clear, that’s a massive compliment).
Le Butcherettes pushes into experimental-ish territory at times, and it doesn’t always work (but as mentioned above, they are all go for it, all the time). Your mileage will vary on the electro-pulse-y opening track, “Feminist Politics,” which features talk/rapping in (mostly) Spanish, but I kind of dig it. It’s also really wild that this track is completely different from the rest of the album.
“Honey Honey” is another slower, almost shuffling garage punk rocker, and when they sing don’t need your fucking attitude, I believe it.
Also: the guitar tone on this one and throughout Kiss & Kill is just perfect.
And then “Six More,” the album closer, just crushes.
Pop culture stuff that has something to do with Le Butcherettes’ Kiss & Kill
Here’s some wild stuff about the band, from Wikipedia:
Their live act, featuring 1950s fashions and props such as brooms, feather dusters, and bloody aprons to refer to women being slaves, quickly achieved acclaim in the Mexican underground scene. Teri Gender Bender would also use artificial blood, flour, eggs, meat, and a real pig head on stage.
Some stats & info about Le Butcherettes – Kiss & Kill
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Indie Rock, Rock Music, Punk Rock, Pop Punk, Garage Punk, Grunge
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – not rated!
- When was Kiss & Kill released? 2008
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #139 out of 1,000
Le Butcherettes’ Kiss & Kill on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Le Butcherettes’ Kiss & Kill that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
And you tell me you love her honey, but you’re gonna kill again.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.