The Beautiful Bodies

Related Content

• Concerts to Catch This Weekend
  September 2, 2011
• RAC (Remix Artist Collective) to Play Bar Smith on May 6
  April 11, 2011
• Songs for the Year of the Dragon
  January 23, 2012
• 12 Bands with Repetitive Repetitive Names
  October 5, 2011
• Tumblr of the Week: Awesome Girls in Bands
  August 17, 2011

More About

• Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Alicia Solo
• Blue Oyster Cult

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

The Beautiful Bodies' debut, Touch Me, is an awkward and only occasionally rewarding combination of pale Yeah Yeah Yeahs mimickry and roaring classic rock. It's as if Karen O hijacked Rush before either party was fully formed. Bodies frontwoman Alicia Solo, for all her stage appeal and self-promotional charisma, has only one song in her, and it's the YYY's "Date with the Night." She talk-sings or shrieks repetitively throughout Touch Me, wasting, through lack of ideas, what could be an interesting, dynamic voice. The first three songs — "Osculator" (a rip-off of "Date"), "Heart Attack" and "Touch Me (But Only If You Know How)" — find the band struggling not to rip its pants while playing beginner funk riffs over dance-punk beats. In the record's middle, the band kicks up the speed, distortion, and number of changes, and gets some go out of it. The more complex songs, such as "Lines of Life" and "Stalker," sound like a riff war between the guitarists from Blue Öyster Cult and the bass player from Yes. Unfortunately, Solo clings to her relentless Karen O-aoke approach start to finish, minus any actual melody. When it comes to writing songs, these Bodies need to start using their heads.