picture by
Convertido Photography
All Hits is a trio from Portland, Oregon which has been around
for a couple of years now and play some kind of mostly mid-tempo punk.
Note that at behind the guitar and mic you can find Janie when she
is not behind the drums in another good band from the Portland area:
Collate.
Izzy, at the bass and mic (as well), is also playing in the very
(very) synth punk act
Dress Forms.
Introducing is probably what we can call the band demo. Released as a 4-track tape at the very end of May 2019, it includes only 2 tracks on their bandcamp page and that's unfortunately all I had access to.
Rolling mid-tempo percussion, guitar switching between background
melodies and open riffs... the band is swimming on the edge of the
punk pool, close to the indie side, and the great dual vocals singing of
Janie and Izzy is stressing it a lot... and it's
working!
Izzy takes care of the punk side of the chant while
Janie does some proper singing, bringing a softer and more melodic
side to the songs which makes me think of bands like
Child's Pose
or
Catisfaction.
A bit more than a year later the band releases Men And Their Work, its first full length, on Iron Lung Records (a label which really surprises me these days by the extreme diversity of its catalogue).
Within 8 songs and a short intro the band delivers what their
demo promised, a great and well mastered album. All Hits keeps the same recipe with an extra pinch of energy (especially
on the hit Blockhead) and punk attitude (Izzy taking the
lead on most of the songs, taking us back to a long tradition of
female-fronted punk bands).
Still mostly mid-tempo, the All Hits' songs do no hesitate to move up a gear when it's needed and as an old punk/hardcore fan I always enjoy a little bit of speed.
I mean the three girls from Portland are writing good songs, keeping the whole lot diverse, energetic and super enjoyable. We are now at the border between old 70s female-fronted punk, the riot grrrl movement (am I hearing some Kathleen Hanna influences in some melodic singing parts?) and more modern all-female bands as quoted above.
There is even something of the Dead Kennedys in the super tensed verses of Kickback (that surfish guitar and rolling bass lines man!) and I love it!
In the end I have to admit that I enjoy a lot more the more aggressive singing parts of Izzy than the melodic side of Janie but well that's me.
All that matters is that All Hits IS A GOOD BAND!
(and it's not the below live videos that will make me say something else)
N,J'Oi!
You can listen to All Hits on Rien à Faire #13.
