Edmonton’s All-Women Brothers are Alisa Garcia and Tanya Gordon, who play guitar and sing, and Clay Culbert and “Wolfboy” Szabo, who play bass and drums, respectively. They produce standard-sounding, jangly indie-pop, and the two sides of this 7″ single are labelled not with the widely-used “1” and “2,” or “A” and “B,” but with “XX” and “XY.” “Payback,” the title song, is pretty generic: sounds like, say, Jale, only different. “Witch Hunt,” on the XY-side, is the better of the two tracks — it’s angrier and stompier, with Tanya’s earthy vocals. Even so, the songwriting is on the trite side: “Like shattered mirrors,” she sings, “you broke my heart / fragmented images / falling apart.” Seems like the All-Women Bros. are trying to tread the line between cheery guitar-pop and righteous, angry punkitude – they’d do better to pick a direction and stick to it.
Payback … / 7″ / $? / Sloth Records 133-16th Ave. NW, Calgary, AB T2M 0H3