Blue Oil Blue Oil LP
Supreme Echo rifles through the CanCon punk archives again, this time giving flowers to Montréal’s BLUE OIL, widely regarded as Quebec’s first all-female punk band. “Money,” the A-side of their 1982 7”, is the only previously released track here (B-side “Living for the Time” was skipped over), with the remaining eleven tracks drawn from abandoned studio, practice, and live recordings from the group’s original 1981–1983 phase—by the late ’80s, BLUE OIL had re-emerged with a new lineup (including the addition of some very prominent keyboards) and a much more polished, mainstream new wave sound, but the iteration of the band documented here has far more in common with under-the-radar early ’80s contemporaries like Seattle’s VISIBLE TARGETS or Portland’s NEO BOYS. Those psychic parallels are especially apparent on the great “Far Too Much” and “Sardine City,” two minimalist anthems mixing post-garage jangle, gritty pop hooks, and an energized basement punk stomp, while the shrouded vocals and moody, bass-driven rhythm of 1983’s “Stop Complaining” point to an increasing post-punk influence, sounding not dissimilar to Chicago’s DA (or taking it back a little further, a less dramatic SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES). International femme-punk scholars, take heed.