Louise Wade is on a Skinny Girl Diet.
Following the release of their ‘Reclaim Your Life’ EP, London’s latest all-girl punk band Skinny Girl Diet played Hackney’s recently opened Moth Club last week.
The Diet consists of sisters Delilah and Ursula Holliday, with Amelia Cutler on bass.
Sounding similar to Sonic Youth (if fronted by Courtney Love), the trio is full of teenage angst and female power. With songs such as ‘I HATE U’ and ‘Prozac Nation’, Skinny Girl Diet show that riot grrrl is alive and kicking.
As soon as I heard about their Hackney date, I knew I had to be there.
At 8pm sharp, I arrived at the venue (formerly a veterans’ club), ready and raring to go.
There wasn’t a big queue and I imagined myself alone in a room with three girls playing to me. A girl in front of me got knocked back by a bearded doorman with tattoos: she hadn’t brought her ID and after quietly pleading, she was still not let in (she did look around 15, to be fair). Stamped with a god-awful blue smudge on my right hand (I’m still struggling to get it off), I walked straight in.
I found myself standing in the middle of a pub, surrounded by pensioners sipping pints of Guinness. I thought I was in Emmerdale’s Woolpack. I had never been to a gig by myself before, and when I saw no young people, I started to wonder if I was in the right place. Surely this lot weren’t here for Skinny Girl Diet? I grew anxious and asked someone where I could find a toilet.
A sign on the door of the horribly bright pink toilets read: ‘one person per cubicle – drug use is not tolerated’. This sign was obviously ignored, as I later heard a chap (who looked like a cross between Alex DeLarge and Cruella de Vil) ask his friend how much cocaine he had left.
I got a beer and went outside for a cigarette. Standing round a lamppost I found a group of young adults, smoking. When they finished their fags I sheepishly followed them in to the ‘Front Room’.
The ceiling was glittered with gold. At the back a miniature bowling alley had become a sort-of dance floor-and-drinking area.
Sixties soul was not the music I was expecting from this club, but I was enjoying it (sat in the corner by myself), along with the £4 Kronenbergs.
The Alex DeLarge character had come to an arrangement with Vince the bartender: ‘Alex’ made copious trips behind the bar to pour himself a glass of ‘lemonade’ from a £5 bottle of vodka.
Around 9pm, everything started to get a bit rowdy. Floods of girls crowded the actual dance floor to move their hips and spill their drinks.
During the support act, I spent most of the time at the back, with a 40-year-old man telling me how to use my camera (excuse me??). Stupidly I’ve forgotten their name, but they warmed up the crowd fantastically with a song about ‘FUCKING SOMEONE!’
It took me some time, and a lot of elbow jabbing, but while many people were going for their changeover cig, I finally emerged right in front of the stage. Luckily I’d had my nicotine dose during the support act.
The trio’s entrance was nothing fancy, but it didn’t need to be. The crowd swarmed towards the stage with cheers as Skinny Girl Diet started playing. There was no let-up in their high energy performance: one song crashed into another without pause.
Watching the girls with their pristine grunge-looking ways was captivating, paralysing. Throughout the whole set they were the centre of everyone’s attention (apart from a few moments when a rude photographer clambered on stage and got in the way).
During ‘I Hate U’, people went mental. With hair and arms flying in every direction, the floor was now one big mosh pit.
Suddenly it was over. A quick ‘thank you’ and the three simply walked off stage – the same no-nonsense way they walked on.
As people poured out of the venue, I spoke to one girl who was clearly as drunk as me. She said only three words ‘they’ll go far’, and then she stole my lighter.
Not happy about the last bit, but I can’t argue with what she said.
I finished my night with a Tesco meal deal and five large portions of McDonald’s chips. Clambering into bed, I tried to forget how hideous my hangover was going to be when I had to get up for work in the morning.