Girl-rock comes in two distinct flavors. On one hand you have the cooked stuff: slickly produced pop tracks about as hard-edged as a bag of Pixie Stix. This stuff is cute, emotional slumber party music-- the kind of music that a "surprise guest performer" would play at the Max on the season finale of "Saved by the Bell." Then there's the other stuff: the raw, crunchy, bitchy, aggressive rock that may or may not be rebelling against anything important. This music comes off about as warm and affectionate as a peanut butter and tin foil sandwich. This shit is hard and uncompromising-- it doesn't shave its legs for a date and eats men like a horny praying mantis.

Both styles are their own animal, complete unto themselves and decked out with their own clichés. These two styles rarely, if ever, cross paths with one another. That's why when one of these groups attempts to cross the very well defined line between these two genres as shamelessly and as sloppily as the Sub Debs do on She's So Control, nothing but disaster can occur.

Instead of mixing the brutal honesty of riot-grrl punk with the gooey emotion of bubblegum pop to create something that could have been truly novel, the Sub Debs have taken a lowest common denominator approach to their music. The band blends the laziest elements of both styles of girl-rock to produce music that's still sick with shitty clichés, but is somehow clichéd in a whole new way. From the regrettable vocals-- which range from a dull, lazy bass drone to a shrill, cold, piercing whine-- to the simplistic three-chord and drums rock music, this album is a total loss. But it's not so much bad as it is a waste of time, from the musicians to the music fans.

Trying to find a wholly original idea on She's So Control is like trying to squeeze a precious metal out of a grapefruit. If you're a member of the "Girl Rock Group of the Month Club," this album may not make you vomit. Depending on how many Hole and Sleater-Kinney posters you have on your wall, you might even want to pick it up. But, if you're any of the other 99% of people on the planet, this record will only reinforce the terrible clichés that surround this genre.

-Steven Byrd