Sahara Hotnights: Jennie Bomb

The Swedish rock scene has been pumping out great band names lately: Division Of Laura Lee, The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, The Hives, The (International) Noise Conspiracy, Hellacopters, Citizen Bird, and more. The music's been good, too, replacing the airy, arty pop of former Swede-music standard-bearers Komeda, Cloud 8, and The Cardigans (all fantastic in their way) with a rougher grind. Sahara Hotnights upholds the new tradition, backing up a cool name and a bright beam of hype—made more intense by lead singer Maria Andersson's relationship with The Hives' Pelle Almqvist—by pounding out loud, fast, cocky rock 'n' roll. The band's second album, Jennie Bomb, opens with the punchy anthem "Alright Alright (Here's My Fist Where's The Fight)," then rolls on with "Keep Up The Speed," which justifies its title throughout a barreling, fuzzed-up, almost Motörhead-like performance. Sahara Hotnights has been compared most frequently to The Runaways, in part because all four members are women, and in part because its version of hard rock sports cleaner production and more ripping hooks than the prickly punk of its countrymen. The group is even more of a throwback than its American counterpart The Donnas, the major difference being that Sahara Hotnights isn't so slavishly devoted to the Class Of '77 Clash/Ramones aesthetic, leaving more room for versatile artistic experimentation. In "On Top Of Your World," Andersson adopts the tone of a detached art-punk declaimer, à la The Waitresses' Patty Donahue or Life Without Buildings' Sue Tompkins, while "With Or Without Control" and "Down And Out" could stand beside the dourer songs of PJ Harvey or Sleater-Kinney, albeit with arm-raising choruses and power-pop bridges thrown in. Mostly, the 32-minute Jennie Bomb pounds relentlessly, ending with the stabbing, searing "Out Of The System." Only when the band stops playing does it allow listeners to take a breath.