“In a world where mediocrity rules the airwaves, one band dares to fuzz the line between love, lust and sonic annihilation…”
April 30th, amidst the sweltering grit and grime of London’s Shepherd’s Bush, The Courettes crash-landed onto the stage like a spaceship cobbled together from melted Spector records and busted guitar parts, all held together with duct tape, desperation, and desire.
Just like Flavia, let’s keep this short and dirty-sweet. You know you’re in for a wild ride when the room’s packed tighter than a porn star’s pants, and the assembled photographers dust down their flashguns, scared of missing a single beat…
Flavia Couri — the banshee bride of the fuzz apocalypse — whipped her guitar like a short skirted barrel rider at a rodeo of the damned. Her voice slicing the room like a razor hidden in a lover’s grin, part purr, part primal scream, unleashing a wide-eyed, frothy wavy gravy of sound that threatened to blast those Bush Hall mirrors into a shattered cloud of cosmic dust. Meanwhile, Martin Couri — half Keith Moon, half caffeinated octopus (try the Turkish stuff opposite the venue, much like listening to The Courettes – it’s like getting fisted with rocket fuel ) — pummelled his kit like he was trying to punch a hole through space and time or perchance conjure Nick Knox back from the tomb for one last ultra-twist.
they’ll blow up your twisted fucked up mind."
The set list was everything a growing boy or girl needs, a B-movie, V8 joyride from hell steeped in sex, sweat, and sticky beats: You Woo Me, Want You! Like a Cigarette, Trash Can Honey — tonight was a high-speed chase through the desert of the collective unconscious. By the time they ripped into Misfits and Freaks, the room, much like an old overripe cheese, had liquefied into a seething, stinking, dirty, sweat-drenched pit of lost souls, jiggling like dashboard bobble heads caught in an earthquake of reverb.
This fervent crowd was a glorious mess of the old and the new — leather, leopard print, creepers, and the ghosts of once-majestic pompadours now thin, faint, and wilting under the heat. These wide-eyed believers stood transfixed, hypnotized by these twin devils of beat and distortion, willingly surrendering themselves to the beautiful wreckage.
It was cinematic carnage , like Russ Meyer directing Faster, Louder, Twangier! on a shoestring budget with a broken Super 8 and a crate of warm beer, with Flavia’s feedback hissing like a snake in the dark and Couri rattling the fillings right out of your teeth.
The Courettes are a detonator wired straight to your primitive brainstem. They’ll do more than blow the dust off your jaded old heart — they’ll get you hot, they’ll get you hard, and with every glorious, lo-fi blast, they’ll blow up your twisted fucked up mind.
THE COURETTES PLAYED BUSH HALL LONDON ON APRIL 30th 2025
SUPPORT FROM THE PRISCILLAS (but that’s another story}