Petrol Girls are out with their latest album, the 11-track genre-bending Baby, out June 24 on Hassle Records. Steeped in biting socio-political lyrics and punk af attitude, it’s quite an exciting listen.
Vocalist Ren Aldridge breaks down all aspects of the band, the impressive new record, and the frightening state of present-day politics and policies seemingly being played out across the globe.
How long had you been working on these songs and writing?
A pretty long time, for us. I think we basically started as the pandemic hit, and we were meant to record it possibly a year before we ended up recording it, but I was really grateful that we had that extra time. We normally just write 10 songs and then put them on an album. But this time, we really wanted to push through to finding a bit of a new sound for us, so we recorded like 24 songs or something like that, but not full songs, just basic sort of scraps of songs, and then chose our favorites out of that.
And it was really right before we went into the studio that obviously the pressure of a deadline and all that, but Joe ([York), our guitarist, really suddenly had a brain wave and I think wrote like half the songs guitar-wise, in the couple of weeks before we went into the studio, so it was a long time, but accelerating as we got closer to the studio, I’d say.
Was it hard to pare it down? Like you said, you had a lot of scraps of songs.
No, I think we had quite a debate on some songs, but with a lot of them, we wrote one whole song on the issue of femicide, an issue I was really keen to write on. And it was OK, and in the past, we would’ve just gone with it. But we ended up scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch, and I’m so glad we did because the one we’ve written for the album is 10 times better than the one we had before.
So, a lot of it was building on stuff we already had, and yeah, we had a whole different chorus for “Baby, I Had an Abortion,” and then scrapped that, wrote the new chorus and built the verses off of that, so it was just a lot of chopping and changing. But I found it a much more liberating process than what we’d done before, for sure.
Well, even, you had your last album out 2019 and then you think early 2020, that’s when the pandemic hit, so were you sending each other files, or how did you go about it?
We didn’t get a lot done in those initial lockdowns because we couldn’t see each other. I can’t really remember how the lockdowns went, but basically as soon as we could see each other, or I think in Austria, where most of us live, it was fine to go and visit each other privately. After the first lockdown lifted a little bit, then you were allowed to visit privately. So, I spent a lot of time in Joe’s room, writing with him. But honestly, it didn’t really click and get going until it was me, Joe, and Zock (Astpai, drums) in the practice space at full volume in the few months before we hit the studio.
I was just thinking of how it flows so well; do you get kind of nutty about the track listing, sequencing?
Yeah, for sure. Laughter) I don’t know how many times we rearranged those songs. But yeah, we do get quite picky about what order the tracks go in. It’s always interesting because we all think about music in very different ways, especially this band. So, Joe for example, is really focused on the music and the feel of the music and what emotional journey the music is taking you on. But I’m really stuck in the lyrics and the concepts and the politics. So, me and Joe, are constantly—We used to be more knocking heads with each other, but now I think it’s a useful creative tension, where we’ll always be like, “Well, what about this?” and “What about this?” (Laughs) And eventually get there.
I guess you look it as vinyl, where you flip it over at the right point…
Yeah, for sure. We always think about start of Side A, end of Side A, start of Side B, end of Side B. So, yeah, the track listing is always built with vinyl in mind.
I was going to say “Bones” is such an epic closer. That’s great.
Yeah, I was in love with that song from the moment we wrote the chorus to it, and the rest of it took months to write. I was really mentally unwell, severely unwell for about seven months, during the time we were writing it, and I did nothing useful in that time for the record apart from the “Take away the noise and I am bones” lyrics because it was describing exactly how I was feeling. And that was an instance of Joe sending a file of a riff he had written, and I thought it was really beautiful, and I wrote that vocal line over the top of it immediately.
And yes, I felt very emotionally connected to that song from Day One. But it almost didn’t make the album because we felt it was so different to the other songs on the record, but then I was just like, “No, we have to have it!” And everyone changed their minds, and we felt we could make it work at the end as long as it was the closer. And I’m so, so glad that we kept it because it really means a lot to me, that song.
Wow, amazing. The whole album sounds cathartic, getting it out. How does it feel for you? You put so much passion into it… Does it get a lot out for you?
Yeah, for sure. The shouting I’ve been doing for a really long time. I used to find that extremely cathartic, but now it depends on the context. Now shouting makes me quite tired. It’s really singing that I’d like to do more of and am doing more of on this record, because I feel like singing opens you up to a whole wide range of emotions. But it’s also—I get a lot more nervous about singing because shouting for me is really easy, but singing is much more scary. (Laughs)
So, breaking new ground. That’s good. And even just musically, I always feel like people want to pigeonhole a band, but I feel like you have many different sounds and styles, I don’t know how you would term it.
We just call ourselves a punk band.
Yeah. OK.
We tried with all different genre names over the years, and I don’t really understand all the different genres anyway and I don’t really care. But none of them really fit us. I feel like punk, I could bang on about what punk is for a really long time. (Laughs) But basically I feel like punk is a music genre more by its politics than by a particular sound. I think what has always been consistent for us is counter-hegemonic, anti-authority, feminist politics. That’s always been at the heart of what we do.
The band began with a very punk approach and I think even with this record, the recording to tape, that kind of forced a more punk approach because you can’t be perfectionist if you’re recording to tape. I don’t know I kind of feel like we’ve just gone for punk in terms of genre because I feel that’s the spirit of what we do and also the community we’re a part of. You’ve got bands from Crass to Propagandhi to Downtown Boys to The Slits. Punk incorporates so many different bands and I love that about it because I feel like punk is constantly reinventing itself, and that’s, for me, why it stays so relevant.
I think it does that politically as well as musically because Riot Grrrl changed a lot with gender in the 1990s, and you’ve got the whole decolonize movement in punk now that’s addressing racial issues within punk. I just feel like it’s always developing and adapting in a way to its core values, and I think that’s really cool and quite unique for a music genre.
Yes, and just you personally, how did you find punk and hardcore?
How did I? I think first stuff like Green Day. I’m from a really small town in the middle of nowhere, but quite near to a city called Bristol in the U.K., and I think through various people’s older siblings, got to hear bigger bands like Green Day and then was slowly introduced to the current bands at the time, I think Random Hand and The Skints, Dirty Revolution, quite smaller bands but we’d go to see them in Bristol, just a super exciting time, and then I fell in with the acoustic punk scene that was kicking off at the time and that was how I kind of felt like I could have a go. And I was terrible. I do not play acoustic guitar very well, and I don’t really sing-sing particularly well, but through that I got more and more involved in the punk-rock community and through running shows and meeting people and going on tour as a backing vocalist and all this sort of stuff.
I only discovered Riot Grrrl in my 20s and only really liked The Slits who were one of my all-time favorite bands as well. That was when I started to feel like this was something I could have a go at. And we began for an International Women’s Day house show I was running in this madhouse I used to live in, in London. And I used to run an International Women’s Day house show every year. And for that year, me and a couple of friends started a band, and it’s on YouTube somewhere, and I think it’s Petrol Girls Astbury Castle, and I’m playing a guitar and it’s miles away from what the band is now.
I think we literally had two practices and played two songs. It wasn’t good, and I love that that’s out publicly because as a band we’ve developed so much and that’s what being in a punk band is all about: you just start, you just try and see what happens. (Laughs)
Yes! That’s what made it so interesting you didn’t have to know how to play expertly, you just had to have the feeling and that’s what made it so accessible. You mentioned The Slits. I was thinking X-Ray Spex. You have so many great ones.
We sampled X-Ray Spex on our last album, that classic, “Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard. Oh, bondage, up yours!” Because that line, for me, it just encapsulates so much stuff. We were really honored that we were allowed to sample that because Poly Styrene is such an icon. I’m so glad there’s that documentary about her life. There were so many important women in punk from the beginning and they have not been given half the attention they deserve. And Poly Styrene, amazing. And The Slits, in my opinion, the absolute best of those early punk bands. So interesting and so fucking cool.
Back to earlier, you mention singing more. “Unsettle,” that sounds kind of beautiful.
Thanks. (Laughs) Yeah, I can do it, it just makes me nervous. I like to challenge myself. I’d like to do more singing.
And then about vocal style, were there front people that inspired you throughout the years?
Yeah, I’m hugely inspired by Janey Starling, who features on the album (on “Fight for Our Lives”). Both as a performer and as a vocalist, I think she really taught me a lot about playfulness and fun, even within a really heavy political context. She’s helped me so much in realizing you don’t have to be super sincere and super happy when putting a political point across and actually you’re going to win more people to your side if you can express a wider range of emotions. I think I definitely had Janey as a vocalist in mind a lot when we were doing the record. And then it’s kind of an indirect inspiration because what I do is so far away from what they do, but Kae Tempest has always been a massive influence for me in terms of what they do lyrically. I think it’s absolutely wild.
And then even stuff like we were trying to go for—in places it’s a bit more towards spoken stuff. And I think at points I was thinking about Listener and I was thinking about Courtney Barnett a bit as well and going for a bit more of an incessant more on the spoken end delivery. I feel like there’s loads more of people to mention, but I’m always really bad at remembering who and how and what. I think in terms of inspiration I only realize afterwards and it’s a very subconscious thing.
I don’t ever really set out to emulate anybody. It’s more I like pushing and exploring what my own voice can do and how do I use my own voice to express the truest version of myself. I’m quite nerdy about the politics of voice and what voice is, and how it’s this meeting point between your body and your mind. And so I’m really into just trying things out. I feel like writing lyrics and making music, especially with voice, is a real soul searching, like finding yourself kind of thing. I love it so much and I feel like I find out a lot about myself every time we write an album. It’s really cool.
I asked about how you got into punk, but growing up, were your parents into music?
Not in an obvious way; my dad actually played piano and sang quite well, but I think I actually heard him do it like three times ever. My mom just kind of stopped really listening to much music when we were kids but has gotten into music since we were teenagers. She was into metal and punk when she was growing up. And then my grandma was into Abba is the band that three generations can agree on. So, if grandma’s in the car, we listen to Abba. They’re great. They’re a fantastic band.
I grew up with a lot of Oasis, Rolling Stones, and stuff like that, but then also Alannah Myles “Black Velvet,” that’s like the soundtrack to my childhood. Quite a lot of, I don’t know what you’d call them, like power ballad singers. (Laughs) I think my parents were quite entertained by me getting into punk and then they were like, “Yeah, this is The Clash,” and not expecting that to be something that would be relevant. And I used to collect when I was nine or something, those Now CDs, which had all the top hits. And my dad would make tapes for family holidays, where we would take it very seriously, using these CDs. And he was allowed a couple of old songs as well, because he was driving. And then we would make a tape out of all of the different songs we chose off of those Now CDs. (Laughter)
And what about your political leanings? Were your parents political? I’m always interested in hearing how people’s views get formed.
I find this really interesting. We have dragged my dad left. I’m the oldest of three daughters. The more men I meet the more I realize how incredible my dad is because—and probably why I ended up as outspoken as I am—because he would engage with me from when I was very young in talking about politics and he would always say and admit it if I changed his mind about something. I was always very curious and interested and asking questions about stuff. I always grew up talking about it, but it was punk rock that fully politicized me in terms of antifascist politics.
And I think the feminist stuff I got from my English teacher at school, who was showing us feminist perspectives of books we were reading and stuff like that. That spoke to me from when I was 16 or whatever. And then my mom, I think it’s really interesting, I think she’s at heart a raging anarchist or communist and a huge feminist, but she would never have—and maybe even now— labeled herself as those things. But she left school when she was like 15 and became an engineer and was the only woman doing the engineering course and managed to win engineer of the year, every year and held her own in an industry that was literally just her and a load of men.
And I think, this was all at the time when huge feminist stuff was happening, but she was from a very poor, working-class background, and that kind of stuff didn’t necessarily reach her. It just didn’t connect with her. But she was doing it anyway, without labeling it as that and challenging so much stuff. So, I think I’ve grown up with a very strong female role model and an extremely emotional and caring and thoughtful, I guess humble, is how I would describe my dad. He’s very different to a lot of men, I think.
And then how did you get Janey to collaborate on this one?
We’re just really good friends and we have been for ages. I think we’ve been friends for six years or so and we met through punk rock and through touring, although it’s funny, I have a photo that I took at a Sisters Uncut demonstration from years ago and she’s in it. I think we were going to the same demonstrations, moving in the same circles but didn’t really know each other.
But through punk and that, we supported each other through so much crazy stuff over the years. It’s been a wild ride, but our friendship has just developed through understanding what it means to be an outspoken, political, feminist woman fronting a band. Which is a specific thing. (Laughs) With quite specific challenges. And yeah, I’m super-happy to have met her and I’m so glad we could include her on this album because she’s not in a band right now but I cannot wait to see what she does next. She’s such a talented performer and lyricist and vocalist and she’s also an incredible activist. It would take me hours to go through everything she’s done, but the work she’s done on gender-based violence is absolutely immense.
And what she’s doing with her campaigning group Level Up is amazing and it’s so strategic and it’s really difficult with activism to measure its impact, but I can tell you from my gut that the work she is doing is changing the world. The impact of what she’s doing is absolutely huge, and I just couldn’t think of anyone better to have involved on the songs.
That’s great. I was just thinking about what you’re saying about gender-based violence, femicide, and one of my favorites is Bratmobile, on their last album [Girls Get Busy, 2002], they had “Shut Your Face” and it was about women being killed and some people not paying attention…
I feel like recently there’s been a surge of attention, a renewed interest in the topic of femicide and gender-based violence and I think a lot of it comes from Latin America, where the Ni una menos movement, which I think really kicked off in 2015, has been gaining such huge momentum.
And that connected with the women’s strike movement over that and then the women’s movement in Kyrgyzstan has grown momentum as well. And I think in the UK, Sisters Uncut have been doing a lot, their response to the murder of Sarah Everard was really well done, and I think a combination of all of these things all over the world, the movements that are building in solidarity with each other and in full awareness of each other I think it’s really powerful.
I do actually feel quite hopeful. I do feel as a society people are beginning to understand it’s a systemic problem and not relationship drama or crazy individuals and it needs to be tackled in a systemic way. It’s the topic I’m most active in these days, and “Fight for Our Lives” is written directly from the experiences I’ve had protesting femicide here in Austria. And we started in June 2020 trying to protest every single one, but they happen—even though it’s a small population, it’s got a high rate of femicide in this country, particularly intimate partner violence. It’s husband and wives. It’s horrific. And it was happening too quickly and too often for us to respond, so we now run these femicide demos every month.
And I think that in itself is quite a statement because yeah, we’re gonna meet here again next month because we know more women are going to be murdered by men. It’s quite difficult because it’s obviously an obscenely heavy and difficult topic, but something about gathering together on the streets to make what is often a very private and a crime that happens in domestic spaces, taking that out onto the streets, and symbolically as well because I make most of the banners and I use bedsheets which hold a lot of emotion for me just in terms of everything they represent, as a domestic object. Which is the site of so much gender-based violence as well.
And then turning those into political banners to march in the streets, each of these lives that have been stolen by male violence, I find really symbolic. But gathering and shouting and singing together in the streets I find it’s upsetting but also empowering at the same time. I just feel like I just have to do something. It’s only going to be through consistent and committed effort that things will begin to shift and change. I’m quite committed on that one.
So, are you all located in Austria?
Me and Joe live in Graz in Austria and Zock, the drummer, lives in Vienna, which is like two-and-a-half hours away. And then our bassist Robin (Gatt) lives in the U.K., but she’s not full-time with the band. She did the album but she’s not able to commit full-time so we actually have a few bassists. Some of them are in Austria as well. It’s always a bit of a logistical challenge, but Zock does the logistics. I’m having nothing to do with logistics. [Laughter] We make it work. We’ve all got our own specialties in this band. Logistics are not mine, they are Zock’s. (Laughs)
I don’t know how to put it, when you introduce people to the band. Do you say Austrian-based band?
It’s really funny because you know how most bands say, “We are blah blah blah from blah blah blah!” (Laughter) We can’t really do that. Sometimes I’ll be, “We are Petrol Girls from…where are we living at the moment, guys?” (Laughs) And it’s funny because Graz feels like our hometown and also Bristol in the U.K. kind of feels like our hometown. We started in London, so is London our hometown? In the press, people say we’re from different countries. It’s really funny.
But, especially since Brexit and in the face of all the bizarre madness going on in the world, I feel very proud to be in a band that is made up of people from different countries and that live in different countries. The experiences that all of us have made of living in different places has been like a life-changing thing for all of us and definitely has influenced us as a band and how we think about stuff as well because I think when you move around a lot the earth doesn’t feel as stable under your feet and nothing feels as certain. And I think that makes you a lot more flexible and open to new ideas and to shifting your perspective on things.
Even if you go on tour in different places, there’ll be a slightly different perspective on different issues or a slightly different focus on the political scene. It’s super interesting and I just feel like we have so much to learn from each other. That’s the best thing about touring: you get to meet people and talk to people from different places. It’s great. I feel like I learn all the time. It’s super cool.
That’s interesting you mention Brexit. I didn’t realize at the time there was such a—I mean that was a precursor to Donald Trump, I guess. I didn’t realize there was such a movement in the U.K. about leaving Europe…
Nor did we. [Laughter] I honestly did not think that was going to happen. We were on tour at the time and we were in Hamburg. We were staying at a British friend who lives in Hamburg house. She said in the morning the result of that vote, and I was like, “Yeah, whatever.”
I thought she was joking, and she’s like, “I’m serious.” And we were all like, “What the fuck does this mean?” I proposed immediately to our bass player at the time Liepa (Kuraite) who’s sadly no longer in the band, she’s Lithuanian, and I was like, “Liepa, can we get married? We need to stay part of the EU or touring is going to be a nightmare.” She was like, “I’d love to, Ren, but gay marriage isn’t allowed in Lithuania.” It’s just a shit show. For me, the most upsetting thing about shit like Brexit, which is just one of a long line of political shit that’s happened in the last few years, is the feeling behind why it happened.
This national pride, this hatred towards outsiders. We all did history in school. Do we not know what happens when we scapegoat people whatever minority? It just feels like history repeating itself again and again.
But about how Brexit happened just before Trump getting elected, just that that’s ascendent, that way of thinking.
I think the U.K. and U.S. influence each other in both directions. I’m horrified for everyone in the U.S. with Roe v. Wade being overturned.
Ohh yeah. I wanted to get into that with you…
I can’t express enough how furious I am. But I think it would be naïve to think that that won’t also have a knock-on effect in the U.K. particularly, but also in Europe. But in the U.K. abortion isn’t decriminalized. It is a crime unless you have the permission of a doctor.
Oh jeez, I didn’t even know that.
Nor did I until literally a few weeks ago! And I was like, I would’ve been more careful when I went to get mine, Jesus. But I think in the U.K. right now, the majority of doctors, you want one, you get one. But it only takes a cultural shift, a shift in the way society perceives abortion, for doctors to start to be able to go, “No, that’s not a good enough reason to get an abortion, I’m not going to authorize this.” And then if you go and get pills or whatever, you’re committing a crime. And there’s actually a 24-year-old woman in Oxford right now who is going to go to the Crown Court, which I think is the highest court in the land because she took abortion pills without the authorization of a doctor. I was so shocked when I found this out. I feel this pushback against reproductive justice is happening in a lot of different countries. The situation in Poland right now is appalling.
Apparently, there is a very powerful anti-abortion lobby gaining power. I was reading about this just a couple of days ago, that is gaining power across Europe. They’re getting people into influential political positions. And it’s very frightening. I feel like it’s something we have to fight back against on all fronts, and I feel like culture and music is one of those battlegrounds as well. I think culture is where so many of our basic political ideas are formed. I feel like culture is what maintains the national identity. It’s what maintains the idea of what a man is or what a woman is or the gender bias, all this kind of stuff, and it’s also where we get our perception of things like abortion. As a society are we going to perceive that as normal fucking healthcare? Or, are we going to start mythologizing into something that it’s really not. Which is what’s happening in a lot of places around the world and what pushbacks like the overturning of Roe v. Wade are based on.
Obviously, the mechanics of those things happening are through the law and legal processes, but it’s based on a certain number of people holding a particular view of that topic. And I believe culture is just one of the areas where we can challenge those views and that’s why I wanted to make the song “Baby, I Had an Abortion,” because I feel like humor and taking the piss can actually be a powerful way of challenging someone’s view of something. Because if you laugh at someone’s opinion, I think that often challenges someone a lot more than just shouting about their opinion. I think if you just shout, people are either just like, “Yes!” or “No!” and that’s the end of that journey. Whereas with humor and slightly more complicated ways of attacking these things, I think things like taking the piss they do more of a corrosive or eroding kind of thing, so we were really intentional about that song and about making it as shameless and like party vibes as we possibly could. And I’m so happy with it.
But “Baby, I Had an Abortion,” you had written before this Roe decision coming out…
Yeah, we released the song back in February and it feels like the news since then has been a relentless stream of terrifying anti-abortion stuff happening. We’ve also seen one of the activists from Abortion Without Borders who are an amazing organization who we are raising money for at the moment, seen one of their activists, she’s facing potentially three years in prison because she gave a woman, a domestic abuse survivor, abortion pills. It’s really frightening. I feel like there just seems to be a frightening pushback on women’s rights and trans rights.
I feel like all of the huge steps forward we’ve made in the last 40 years or whatever have terrified these conservative men so much that the pushback and the backlash is on, and it’s hard but I truly believe we will keep fighting it and that we’ll win in the end because—I don’t know if that’s true. Because I was going to say the majority of the people that have an issue with abortion and trans rights are old, but then you’ve got this wave of incels and all of these awful young men who are being radicalized online.
They’re the ones who are doing all of these awful shootings and stuff like that and it’s really wild and it feels like so much of this backlash is just to do with men being unable to figure out what their purpose is in a world where women and other genders are liberated. It’s terrifying and also fucking pathetic at the same time.
And one more thing, so have the three constant members in the band been you, Joe, and Zock since the beginning?
Me and Joe and Liepa were the original members, but Zock joined after a year or two. It was the four of us for eight years or something, seven years. Then we parted ways with Liepa which was really sad but being in a band’s not an easy thing to do. I was heartbroken but I really respect that it wasn’t for her anymore. And yeah, now it’s been really cool and really fun to meet all these other bass players. It’s always exciting to have new people in the tour van. And everyone brings a different vibe, it’s really cool.
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Listen to “Baby, I Had An Abortion” here:
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Photo courtesy of Hanna Fasching
