When the blistering punk-pop duo Lambrini Girls were putting the finishing touches to their debut album last year, it felt as if the world had reached peak insanity. But, they say, look at what then happened – all the madness, gaslighting and turmoil spewing out of the internet and into reality. The spring of 2024 turns out to have been merely the beginning of a free fall into global mayhem.
They recorded Who Let the Dogs out last April. “Since that the world has got even crazier,” Phoebe Lunny, their singer and guitarist, says. The record “articulates that fear and anger about current social, political affairs. It is a manifestation of observing the world going to absolute f**king shit.”
The album, which features production from Daniel Fox of Dublin’s Gilla Band, is a striking snapshot of our spiral into anarchy. The toxic legacy of imperialism, workplace misogyny, and idiots on social media steering us all to hell in a digital handcart are among the targets of Lambrini Girls’ machine-gun wit across 11 gloriously abrasive bangers from the Brighton two-piece.
It’s a pummelling though very arch and often funny LP: “Oh my God, hi, do you remember me? You reposted that thing I wrote about women in music. Thank you so much for doing your bit,” they proclaim on Big Dick Energy, a lacerating takedown of alpha-male machismo. That combination of fury and humour has catapulted Lunny and Lilly Macieira, the group’s bassist, to the top of 2025’s bands-to-watch lists.
The acclaim has been universal. Variety has praised their “abrasive punk songs tackling a variety of issues, from misogyny to TERFs to homophobia”. “Loud, raw, and impossible to ignore,” agrees the NME. Uncut describes them as a “no-holds-barred, sloganeering assault on the status quo”.
Lunny and Macieira appreciate the attention, but what they really want is for their lyrics about workplace sexism (Company Culture) and corruption and privilege in the music industry (Filthy Rich Nepo Baby) to connect with audiences.
They’re not here to lecture: fuelled by onslaughts of distorted guitar and bass and sly, wry lyrics, their songs are, first and foremost, great fun. But they do have a message. Several messages, in fact – one being that the music industry is every bit as dysfunctional and predatory as outsiders might think. If anything it’s even worse, as they explain on their early single Boys in the Band (“the lines are getting blurred ... when girls say they’re not safe to be around”).
“There are multiple bands that I know, and have seen multiple SA” – sexual assault – allegations against them. And they are totally celebrated, especially in an era where there’s [an outcry over] Gisèle Pelicot,” Lunny says, referring to the French woman drugged and raped by her husband and other men over more than a decade. “I see the same people who are fans of these bands talking about what’s happened to Gisèle Pelicot and being actively, genuinely concerned [but] unwittingly [supporting] abusers and hailing them as heroes when they’ve done a lot of bad stuff.”
The musicians get away with because they – or, more to the point, their managers and labels – have some of the best legal protection in the business.
“Those people have expensive lawyers who can threaten any victim. And that comes from money. That comes from having financial backing, label backing. And that’s what I find worrying. We can all be good people and genuinely care about this stuff. But money also wins, and it will always protect these people, and the music industry totally enables it. I can’t say who those bands are. We would literally get sued. Our careers, we would literally be made bankrupt by these people.”
Such behaviour is well known inside music, but nobody is prepared to raise their voices for fear of being eviscerated in court.
“There are so many people who know about all of these open secrets in the music industry and the fact that it’s unable to be spoken about. It makes me feel sick – and that, in itself, is a prime example of how abuse culture is enabled, because it can happen on very, very small scenes, but it can also happen on a much larger scale, where there’s big f**k-off barristers involved and big labels covering up these people’s behaviour. And it means none of us is actually safe at all. A lot of people who are advocating for certain things” – she means preachy artists – “are doing so with the exemption of applying any of that to themselves.”
Lambrini Girls have also spoken out about Gaza. They were among a number of US and British musicians who joined Irish bands in their boycott of last year’s SXSW musical festival in Austin, Texas, because of its sponsorship by the US military. Explaining that withdrawing from the festival would leave them in the red to the tune of £4,000, the duo said, “We can’t affiliate ourselves whatsoever with SXSW without our solidarity becoming totally inauthentic.”
A year later Gaza remains a flashpoint: The Irish Times mentions the ongoing debate in Ireland about Bono and whether, as one of the newest recipients of the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U2 frontman is doing enough to speak out about events in the Middle East, including the United States’ role in supplying Israel with weapons.
“All of my dad’s-side family, they’re all Irish. I’m very much aware of generational trauma which comes from British occupation in Ireland. I guess also I’ve grown up in England. So I don’t know if it’s particularly my place to pass judgment, being a Brit,” Lunny says.
“But I think it’s important for any artist to use their platform to be [talking] about these issues. Obviously, Ireland being under British occupation for years and years and years ... it’s amazing to see that visibility raised [through Irish outspokenness about Gaza]. Any artist should be using their platform to speak out about these issues regardless. If you have a platform, fucking use it.”
Lambrini Girls acknowledge that some artists feel there is no more to be said – what’s the point of addressing an issue already in the spotlight? “There’s a lot of people being, like, ‘Well, everyone’s doing it. What can I do?’ And, genuinely, just sharing and opening discourse generally costs the Israeli government so much money, which they spend on Israeli propaganda. So there’s no reason one should never be speaking about it.”
Lunny and Macieira were close long before they started making music together. (At one point they worked at the same Brighton bar.) That bond has proved invaluable in negotiating the stresses and strains of recording and touring.
“We were good friends when we started out. Brighton’s a small place. You get to meet everyone. Phoebe and I were very much in the same circles,” Macieira says. “That’s one of the main reasons I ended up joining the band – because we were such good friends, and I liked playing music with my friend. It’s only gotten more so, because we spend almost every waking second with each other. It does help a lot if you’re good friends with the person that you’re in a band with, and share the same goals and the same values.”
As a female-fronted group they’ve been gawped at slightly, asked over and over what it’s like to be a woman making music. They’ve also been compared to other young woman artists from the UK. And they’ve been invited to take potshots at groups accused of being “industry plants”. They don’t single out anyone by name, but this is clearly a reference to The Last Dinner Party, an all-woman quintet from middle-class backgrounds attacked, inaccurately, for being concocted in a laboratory by label executives.
“Women in music ... you’re either sensationalised or it’s, like, what’s their friendship like? We get asked a lot about other bands – we found, a lot of the time, a lot of journalists will be, like, ‘You’re really strong musicians and you’ve gone through so much and you see these industry plants and they’ve come from so much backing – what do you think?’ And they’re trying to put you against other female musicians.”
The great irony is that even as female bands are set against one another, women are seemingly calling the shots at the very top of music. Taylor Swift, for instance, is arguably the most powerful person in entertainment – surely the first woman to be in that position.
“I think it’s great that women are in power in the music industry,” Lunny says. “At the end of the day, I don’t want anyone to be a billionaire or a millionaire, so it’s kind of weird. I’m glad that it’s not all men, but I can’t like anyone who has that much money. As much as I want to root for female and femme and queer musicians to be in power, once you have that much money you’re corrupt. It’s the same for anyone: nobody should have that much fucking money or should have that much power. Arguably, if someone has to, I would prefer it to be a woman.”
[ Big sister energy: How Taylor Swift built a billion-dollar musical empireOpens in new window ]
The music industry, Lunny continues, is inherently corrupt. “Thank God there are women in positions of power within the music
industry. But if you actually look at who is working behind the scenes of the music industry, it’s still all men. Who actually does have the power? Is it Taylor Swift? I’m sure she does have some autonomy. But to get to that level you have to sacrifice a lot ... Is it that women are in power – or have men just found a way to profit off the idea of a powerful woman?”
They are thoughtful and sincere in their views – but don’t mistake Lambrini Girls for sanctimonious: their humour takes no prisoners. Consider their new single, C***ology 101, on which Lunny and Macieira deploy the C-word with aplomb, declaring, “Doing a poo at your friends house – c***y/ Stealing shit from chain stores – c***y”. While the song is a verdict on the cult of individualism, its depiction of a society in which everyone is out for themselves is delivered with a lacerating wit.
“That is intentional. If you’ve got a sense of humour that tends to come out in different ways – in your day-to-day or songwriting. If you are trying to make someone listen to what you have to say, you need to do that in a way which is as engaging as possible. If you’re just grabbing someone by the shoulders and screaming in their face, going, ‘Wake up, sheeple,’ people are going to fucking switch off. That’s not enjoyable.
“If you want someone to listen to you, you’ve got to win them over. A really good way to disarm people and to engage them is to be funny, yeah? Because who doesn’t like having a giggle?”
Who Let the Dogs Out is released via City Slang. Lambrini Girls perform at Whelan’s in Dublin on Saturday, April 5th, and at the In the Meadows festival in Kilmainham, Dublin, on Saturday, June 7th
