12 Rounds Jitter Juice (Polydor)
Don’t let the name fool you. 12 Rounds are a bunch of mad, female-led Caucasians who decided to form a band to wail about personal irritations and low self esteem, not a group of angry, young black men rapping about how great they are and/or the fucked state of the world they live in.
12 Rounds sound somewhere between Garbage and Ruby. The band makes use of programmed noise but aren’t as polished and poppy as Garbage, or as influenced by the industrial and trip-hop scene as Mark Walk, Ruby’s producer/programmer.
12 Rounds are worth your time for two reasons. One, singer Claude has a distinctive voice and has obviously spent enough time listening to Kim Gordon, Patti Smith and Cyndi Lauper to realise that ordinary lyrics can become extraordinary if phrased unconventionally. Two, Claude’s bandmates can back her rather creatively with sounds both traditional and avant-garde. At the end of the day though Jitter Juice has at least five good tracks, definitely reason enough to buy this album.
Hamish Withers