A y2k vision: The Movie EP
This alternative female-fronted pop group has once again proven that there are few things in life better than a synthesizer, head-banging with pink hair and spilling your heartbroken guts out into a song. Self-labeled badasses, Nasty Cherry is group of four twenty-something-year-old women brought together with the sole intention of creating new music on the scene. With a sound comparable to Dua Lipa and Sky Ferreira, the group’s music is something out of a teenage dream romance flick. The group was formed by Charli XCX in 2018 and was recently featured in the Netflix docu-series “I’m with the Band: Nasty Cherry” in 2019, which followed the band from their start as strangers in a house to their rise playing sold-out venues. The group released their first EP on November 22, 2018.
The group consists of lead singer Gabi Bechtel, a former model with surprisingly no music experience before they formed; guitarist Chloe Chaidez, lead singer of the rock band Kitten; drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson, who previously played drums on tour with Charli XCX; and bassist Georgia Somary, one of Charli’s longtime friends who started playing bass only a year before joining the band.
The group’s newest release, The Movie, is an EP dedicated to love, youth and the essence of the early 2000s. The y2k nostalgia is evident throughout the group’s music, each note sending images of denim mini skirts, eye rolls and long talks about the boys at school on telephones with curly cords.
The opener on the EP, “Six Six Six,” is a harder rock song compared to the rest of the pop-focused EP (think Rocky Horror Picture meets a teen romance movie), which speaks to the group’s fluid energy. “What’s The Deal” is an ethereal tune, not unlike some of Caroline Polachek’s music, such as “Door.”
“All in My Head” is a chill, guitar-heavy ballad with the spirit of the Cocteau Twins. The ‘80s indie-pop-inspired tune “Her Body” feels like a song people would play at the end of the night at a nightclub. It’s a breakup revenge song to remember. With the spirit of the Cocteau Twins, lead singer Bechtel sings, “If I find her body/ Lyin’ next to yours/ Won’t be me that’s hurtin’/ ‘Cause you’re headfirst in the dirt.”
The last song, “Lucky,” is a heavy synth piece that feels like it could be used in a montage scene of an ’80s rom-com. With catchy chord progressions and layered harmonies, this song might be the result of Gary Numan deciding to become an alternative pop girl band.
Nasty Cherry takes familiar indie tunes to another magenta-hued level in The Movie with their new-age synth tones, elements of ’90s rock and influence from the pop of the early 2000s.
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