We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, but what exactly is all this sister chitter chatter about? Yes, yes, so we acknowledge that two thirds of the Rogers Sisters are in fact sisters, with a shared family name, Rogers. That’s Laura and Jennifer, drums and guitar (and vocals both) respectively. And yes, writing credits, lead voices and chiming, humming guitars clatter noisily across the record making reasonable claims for at least partial ownership, not to mention putting into play the principle of majority rule (majority female rule at that – and majority sisterly rule to trump that), but this still feels, at points, to be entirely singing/bass-wrestling uber-machine Miyuki Furtado’s show.
Admittedly it’s in a live setting where he emphatically claims the spotlight and makes everyone and everything else seem peripheral. But on the album, on tunes like the epic, chugging knuckle-dusting closer ‘Sooner Or Later’, we’re still effectively talking bass porn; things writhe like he’s wrestling a Jurassic anaconda in his briefs, pure throbbing projectile filth. And that is an omnipresent potent force throughout the record, even (and in fact sometimes especially) when it lurks just out of sight beneath the surface. When he’s singing, like on the choreographed almost punk cheerleader-jerkiness of ‘The Light’ and ‘The Conversation’, he sounds like Little Richard possessing that wobbly-baritone bloke from the B52s. And that is certainly one way not to not get yourself noticed.
But the sisters do define the sound of the record equally, let’s not make them out to be insignificant, and with their question/answer vocal bouts with Miyuki they reinforce the alt-B52s comparisons that plague them for a very good reason. Their loosly harmonic slacker vocals on ‘Emotion Control’ and ‘Money Matters’ see them swimming with their eyes closed between The Breeders and Sleater Kinney which helps provide a nice juxtaposition for Miyuki’s giddy testosterone-pumped virility. And they should probably get credit for taming that beast. This record does see them for the first time sounding produced, which does wipe away some of the skeletal appeal of the ‘Three Fingers’ mini album. Perhaps they’ve tamed things a little too much. But they can keep the name.