NOBRO – Set Your Pussy Free | Album Review

NOBRO have toured with the likes of PUP, Billy Talent, Alexisonfire and have even opened for Blink-182 – all before releasing a full length. Life goals for some, but their debut only proves that they’re just getting started. It’s time to Set Your Pussy Free.

It’s namesake a righteous call back against the United States Supreme Court’s stance on abortion legislation, Set Your Pussy Free is two things. Firstly, it’s a body of work that wonderfully and playfully showcases how how the Montreal band have swiftly become a mainstay within the global punk scene, a riotous pop-punk presentation mirroring the sugar-rush of the band’s renowned live presence. Secondly, it’s a record champions the three crucial values of modern punk on-high; inclusivity, liberation and adolescent fun. Quire frankly, it’s a bootleg firework punk party of a record.

‘Set That Pussy Free’, the respective opener, establishes this with the grace of a firecracker to the face. Sounding wonderfully unsanitised and rough like all good self-respecting punk should, the song’s celebrity nature infectious and challenges the gravely serious nature of the subject of women’s healthcare with equal parts urgency and joy.The sardonic ‘Let’s Do Drugs’ follows with it’s lyrical refrain of demanding substance abuse being admittedly adolescent but still wholly fun, and ‘Delete Delete Delete’ laments the incomprehensible horrors of social media with nothing but breathless pace. These are snappy, knee-jerk barrages of punk that uphold the longstanding values of punk established decades ago whilst sounding re-energised for the modern youth.

Granted though, this overarching sense of child-like playfulness may bit a slight too prevalent for some, especially in the case of ‘I Don’t Feel Like It’. Sounding akin to a power-pop teenage monologue complete with spoken word passages, the track ultimately might be too adolescent for some. However, the energy not just within this song but the record as a whole is as admirable as it is infectious. As proven within the zesty and breathless ‘Where My Girls At’ – a track documenting NOBRO’s rapid ascension to the higher levels of the punk hierarchy – and within the surprisingly progressive leads of ‘Let’s Get Out Of Here’, Set Your Pussy Free is a body of combustable energy that shoots forth with speed regardless of you’re in the way or not; much like a dodgy firework set alight by your dad that falls over and shoots towards your hapless nan.

With that in mind, it’s essentially impossible to dislike or disagree with this sugar-fulled record. There’s many a stern po-faced man gatekeeping and deciding what punk is right now (it’s always men) and Set Your Pussy Free is a zesty and care-free respite from that. ‘Nobody Knows’ is set to be a track of discussion though, not in relation to it’s lyrical subject or presentation, but in thanks to it’s central riff and how it sounds particularly familiar to Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’. The slightly more psych stylings in this track may be brilliant and a counterpoint to the punk rush inherent to the record, but with a riff as familiar as that, raised eyebrows are set to be inevitable.

In all though, Set Your Pussy Free is a welcome break from mundanity, one delivered with rallying calls to joy aplomb and pop-punk energy in overwhelming qualities. Harnessing the compounding energy that has allowed this band to become such a dotted live fixture in the filthy world of punk, NOBRO have crafted a record that’s both bolting, helplessly delightful and embodies their unstoppable nature as a creative entity. Regardless if one is a fan or not, there’s simply no stopping NOBRO.