BOOK REVIEW. YINPOP. WOMEN IN INDIE AND ALTERNATIVE ROCK. VOL. 1: UK BANDS BY S. WHITE

This book originally came out in 2014. The author defines YinPop as ‘music with a female vocalist in the indie/alternative rock tradition, tending to be some combination of noisy, melodic, dangerous or otherworldly’. There’s a brief introduction that discovers some of the artists that may fall under this label.

The rest of the book covers 10 bands - give or take, some chapters also cover side projects so the chapter on Siouxsie and the Banshees covers The Creatures as well. The 10 bands are Siouxsie + The Banshees (incl The Creatures), Altered Images, Cocteau Twins, Shop Assistants (incl The Fizzbombs and The Motorcycle Boy), The Flatmates, The Primitives (Paul Court from the band also provides an introduction), The Darling Buds, The Heart Throbs, Voice of the Beehive and Shampoo.

Each chapter gives an extensive history of the band followed by a discography, information of any music videos/important TV appearances or press stories, chart placings, concert setlists and lists of songs that particular band covered and anyone who covered them. There’s also a chapter listing rarites to look out for and a list of further reading.

It’s an interesting book and even in this age of wikipedia and fansites, it’s still nice to have all the information in one place for each band and it’s certainly extensive and as far as I know, accurate. Unfortunately I do think it comes across as a little dry, there isn’t really any new information about the bands and only a few quotes and no photo section at all (the lack of photos I’d probably put down to some sort of copyright issue but it’s still a shame especially as I think it would be great to at least see some of the artwork for the records etc.) Although some of the bands have been written about elsewhere (such as Siouxsie and the Banshees) most of them haven’t really had much in-depth coverage and it’s great to see them get more than a passing mention. I’d love it if this was the 1st in a series of books especially as some of the other artists the author namechecks are well worth reading about (such as Strawberry Switchblade or Lydia Lunch).

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN MARCH 2016