 Artwork from Bandcamp page. It's hard to differentiate between Alice Bag the band and Alice Bag the person, of Alice Bag then versus Alice Bag now. Of course in a way they are all interchangeable, one in the same, and in other ways they couldn't be more different if they tried. This latest release from Alice Bag shows all that and more about her. This, the third album from the Legendary, mischief making, boundary pushing musical entity known as Alice Bag is called Blueprint and it's an eclectic urban mish mash of styles and sounds and palettes, much like the ex-elementary school teacher Alicia Armendariz, aka Alice Bag, is, and much like her hometown of Los Angeles is as well. There's nothing really "Punk" about this album, and that's a good thing. To try to contain Alice Bag into such a constrictive limiting musical bind is ridiculous. She's much too smart and much too good to fall for that trap. Her musical diversity is on full display here, everything, her roots, her influences, her upbringing, her everyday interactions, y todo, and musically it all sounds pretty good and it's really interesting to listen to. It's a refreshing change from the same regurgitated "more Punk than thou" BS going around nowadays. Opening track Turn It Up is a super poppy, uplifting, Riot Grrrl type of song, if you're into that sort of thing, and then the following track, Invisible, is a super lush, slinky, mesmerizing song that sounds like something off the latest Blondie album. Alice Bag has an incredible voice. She sounds fantastic on here, whether shouting out some angry feminist rhetoric about unfair wages with Kathleen Hanna and Alison Wolfe on the tune 77, or crooning like an exotic torch singer in a Vegas lounge on a lonely Tuesday morning on the tune White Justice. The band she has backing her on this release are no slouches either - they do a great job of conveying the musical mood that Alice Bag is conjuring up on each individual song, whether it's the funky riffs in Shame Game, the sugary sweet Pop of the title track Blueprint, or Stranger, or the Geza X style of Quirk on the song The Sparkling Path. Well produced, great sounding, yeah, this is a really refreshing release from Alice Bag. Give it a listen. I'm pretty sure you'll like it. It's good to have her back. 😀 This release was put out there by Don Giovanni Records. Available on blue vinyl by clicking here. You can also buy Blueprint from the Alice Bag website (www.alicebag.com) and at every gig she plays, which is a lot. Also available digitally on Spotify (click here), Apple Music (click here), Bandcamp (click here), Amazon (click here) and everywhere else Punk music is marketed to the masses like the disposable commodity that it is.
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