Lambrini Girls: fiery Brighton punks demanding safe spaces for all

Phoebe Lunny is three bottles of white wine down, desperately trying to calm her nerves ahead of her first ever time headlining a show as the lead vocalist of Lambrini Girls. It is October 2020, and the band she had formed in lockdown have yet to have their first official outing. As she prepares to take the stage of the Brighton Dome, with her mum in the socially-distanced crowd, it suddenly strikes her: their setlist includes a song they had recently written by the name of ‘Help Me I’m Gay’. But Lunny has not yet come out to her family.

“I’d already ripped open my pants by kneeling down, and I’d covered myself in alcohol and I was all sticky, I didn’t really know what I was doing,” she remembers. “I was a mess. I got onto the stage and shouted out, ‘Where is my mum? My mum’s here. Mum, I’m gay!’ And she was like, ‘Oh OK, great, sick’. She genuinely didn’t give a fuck, because she’s a normal person, and then we played the song and it was fucking great.”

‘Help Me I’m Gay’, which features on the NME 100 graduates’ debut EP ‘You’re Welcome’ (released May 19 via Big Scary Monsters), is the perfect snapshot of the band: raucous, fearless and jubilant. Furious shards of guitar rip and tear through the speakers, while Lunny’s manic, guttural, riot grrrl-indebted vocals deliver lyrics that are as defiant as they are witty: “Dad, why don’t I date men like you? / Because Freud was wide off the mark with my daddy issues”.

Beneath the hedonistic front and the spiky, fiery aesthetic, however, lies a truly serious raison d’être for the existence of Lambrini Girls. “Brighton in itself is a very problematic music scene,” says Lunny, referring to the city where she and bassist Lilly Macieira grew up. “Trigger warning, but there are a lot of abusers, there are lots of cases of sexual assault and people being allowed to go to gigs and just swan around wherever the fuck they want, pretty much.”

A 2021 study by Safe Spaces Now revealed that 40% of women under the age of 40 have experienced sexual harassment at a live music event. “Our songs are about saying, ‘Fuck these people’,” says Lunny. “We want people to know that if their abuser walks in, we will literally grab them by the scruff of their neck and we’ll get them out. That was the main incentive to start the band.”

One example came when Lambrini Girls played a headline show at Brighton’s Green Door Store in January this year. As they began their song ‘Craig David’, Lunny was approached by a member of the crowd.”This girl came up to me just before people were about to mosh, and she whispered in my ear that this guy had grabbed her arse. I was like, ‘Everyone stop!’ And I got a security guard and I was like, ‘Him, out, now!’ and he just dragged this guy out. It was sick.”

Lunny and Macieira are acutely aware that there is a limit to their ability to fully control the people that attend their shows, but they feel deeply that it is their role to do everything that they can to address the issue of gig safety. Lunny routinely gives a speech in introducing their song ‘Boys in the Band’, for instance, a song written expressly about the depressing cycle of abusive behaviour at gig venues, imploring people to confront their friends if necessary.

“It’s not really about completely cancelling or stonewalling somebody,” explains Macieira. “It’s about opening up a conversation. It’s really difficult to have a mate and to hear some dodgy things about them, but at the end of the day, it’s just really important that there is an open dialogue.”

Lunny adds: “Punk in itself was about inciting positive change, but now, it is literally about fucking men stomping around on stage singing about capitalism, when they all come from fucking five-bedroom houses in Surrey. If you do not get yourselves into these spaces and actually call people out on this fucking bullshit or just try to teach someone a fucking lesson, then it’s not going to change.”

Lunny and Macieira got to know each other as fellow regulars on the Brighton live music circuit, briefly playing together in the band Wife Swap USA before convening again in 2020 for this project. They were initially joined by drummer Catt Jack, although their membership ended on good terms in early 2023, with the ‘You’re Welcome’ EP serving as the final statement of the original lineup.

Lambrini Girls’ passion bursts out of every one of the EP’s eight tracks, channelling their anger into a swirling blitz of necessary, raucous energy. It stands alongside records like M(h)aol’s recent debut album ‘Attachment Styles’ and Big Joanie’s ‘Back Home’ as examples of a new wave of feminist punk that articulates contemporary struggles and demands change.

With the new drummer yet to be announced, Lambrini Girls are set to play their biggest show to date on at Dog Day Afternoon in July, the one-day festival in Crystal Palace Park organised by Iggy Pop, who has been playing the band regularly on his BBC 6 Music show for the last few months. Sharing a bill with punk luminaries such as Blondie, Buzzcocks and Billy Idol, it is safe to say that the booking took a moment to sink in. “We thought it was a mistake,” says Macieira. “We rang our manager and told them to accept it now before they realised they’d made a terrible error.”

Lunny, now a far cry from the nervous, wine-stained wreck that graced the Brighton Dome over two years ago, is much less phased. “Nah, Iggy Pop is a fucking icon. He is a good example of a musician who has tried to uphold values in an industry that doesn’t really do the same,” they say. “He constantly champions DIY bands and queer bands, and I think a lot of people can take a leaf out of his book. We’ve been his favourite band for the last twenty years!”

Lambrini Girls’ debut EP ‘You’re Welcome’ will be released on May 9 via Big Scary Monsters

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