Viv
Let’s face it, Christmas never goes to plan. There’s always something that gets in the way. The perfect seasonal tale, with its Dickensian morality or heartwarming Hollywood values is, for the vast majority of the human race, an unattainable myth.
Celebrated ex-Slits guitarist, Viv Albertine has reworked one of her existing songs to create a dark, twisted take on everyone's favourite Christian festival. Her acclaimed track ‘Confessions of a MILF’ has been subjected to a sinister Seasonal adaptation and now becomes ‘Home Sweet Home (...at Christmas)’ - Viv’s latest annual alternative Christmas single.
Mixed by legendary Slits producer, Dennis Bovell (who produced ‘Cut’), Home Sweet Home (...at Christmas) blends taste, humour, politics, feminism, counter-culture and freedom - sweeping aside the misogynist, ageist, sterile teen pap that reality TV pop moguls love to lumber us with each year.
Viv Albertine shot to prominence in 1976 as lead guitarist of the original all-girl punk band The Slits. The band became hugely influential, both musically and culturally. They meshed punk and reggae culture, and smashed the preconceptions surrounding “women in rock”. The band’s debut album Cut is still regularly cited on lists of the greatest albums ever made.
Viv retired from music after The Slits disbanded in 1982, but has been making a gradual return over the last two years. Home Sweet Home (…at Christmas) not only showcases the imagination, originality and chops that changed rock music forever in the Seventies, it also demonstrates that Albertine has lost none of her edge and wit. Time has failed to diminish her willingness to challenge convention, throw a spanner in the works, and unite people under a banner of well-natured honesty.
Virginia Woolf once stated that the three rules of great writing were to survive, create beauty, and tell the truth. Viv Albertine did this as a girl and a young woman, and now she’s doing it again…
If you want an easy comparison - she’s, like, the Tracy Emin of rock.