Inspired by the dusty vocals of ‘50s crooners and ‘60s girl groups like The Ronettes but injected with a potent mixture of new wave spunk and punk rock twang, Miss Derringer is the exact convergence where conventional rock merges with conceptual art, mixing Western-tinged moodiness with new wave accessibility. The songs tell the sorrow of a woman’s sacrifice amidst the uncertainty and cruelty of the infamous 1960s Boston-Irish mob war. Launching with the playful opening track “Click Click Bang Bang” with a propulsive upright bass line and Blondie styled shimmy, the album kicks off with a ‘bang’ and doesn’t let up. From the twang-fueled girl-group send-up “Black Tears” to the velvety fore-lorn angst of “Death By Desire” to the dramatic “Drop Shot Dead” (which could be a lost song from West Side Story), the album creates an almost visceral aural backdrop to an alternate universe where outlaws intermingle with punks without any sort of culture clash, but instead in a pop-melancholy sound that never ceases to explore how love can do you wrong.
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