There can be no doubt that emerging London-based trio The Cut Outs mean serious, serious business. In terms of both their music and their presentation, this group have a really direct and honed approach – their website is professional and well maintained, their photography is precise, and their music is unapologetically streamlined. Such collective gestures leave the band’s audience in no doubt of what The Cut Outs are about – audacious rock filled with brazen grit and mettle.
The group’s core members are two guitarists who met at a session musician audition for Kylie Minogue. Deemed unworthy through fear of upstaging the pint-sized singer, the girls chose to form their own band together. Both Stevie, originally from Newcastle, and Jess, who hails from Melbourne, bonded over previous experiences of claustrophobic creative environments (ballet for Stevie, acostica for Jess), and chose rock as a far more unfettered style of artistic expression. A short while later they acquired their drummer Damian and The Cut Outs became fully formed.
The band themselves define their sound as “cock-rock”. Unarguably an unenviable task, this band are attempting to take on the stale and dated world of macho rock both musically and in terms of gender, attacking the flaccid nature of the genre and the perennial issues of chauvinism inherent. Luckily, there is a definite static, stubborn vibe to The Cut Outs, a relentless refusal to be anything other than who they are and what they want to be. Certainly, the group have definite similarities to The Runaways, they have that same tom-boy-ish spunk and sass.
Unsurprisingly, The Runaways are a key cited influence for the group, but other artists such as Peaches, The Pixies, Dead Weather, Prince and Bowie are referenced. Perhaps the likes of The Ramones and The Stooges should be considered an influence too, however. The group’s songs are short and filled with fuzz, with disparate sound clashes between high-pitched guitar pinches and thick, rough, steady and grinding bass and drums. There is a general vibe of surliness and daunting sounds that have a definite American punk basis. Ultimately there is a clear, archaic rock vibe to The Cut Outs music, but surprisingly it does not sound too dated or throwback. There are modern elements in their music coupled with polished production, which keep this act well within the 21st century.
The Cut Outs released their debut EP Honey Where Your Mouth Is on 10 Oct 2011 on White Milk Records, combined with a video for lead track ‘Chaser’ which is available for free download. There is an album set for 2012.
See this at TGA at: http://www.thegirlsare.com/2011/11/30/introducing-the-cut-outs/
