Daisy Chainsaw was one of my favorite bands when I was about fourteen or so. In the years before the whole Nirvana/Grunge explosion, me and my friends were listening to a slew of seventies and early eighties punk rock as well as hard post-hardcore noisy/loud metal-inspired “Alternative” rock such as Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, L7, the Lunachicks, and Faith No More (and some pretty terrible industrial music, but that’s another story)…
Anyway, Daisy Chainsaw came along into my consciousness on 120 Minutes and seemed like a brash and wonderful blend of all of the above. They’d just lock into a fuzz bass groove and rock as hard and relatively fast as possible, then do some psychedelic gurgly water sounds, then jump back into it. And Katie Jane Garside’s voice was all over the place, whispering, screaming, belting it out, all the time sounding like a little English girl traipsing about a garden, getting her play dress all spoiled.
In my mind, they fit in pretty well with the grrl bands (not necessarily riot) that were around at the time, like the Lunachicks, Babes in Toyland, and the pre-Ms. Cobain Hole. But perhaps being English, slickly produced, and on a label with the Sugarcubes, They Might Be Giants, and Chumbawamba rather than Bratmobile hurt their chances of hitting the American big-time and riding the wave of grunge-esque Alternative Rock that soon spread across this nation’s high schools and dorm rooms. Also, I guess they lost Garside right around the time they were set to hit the big-time, which can never help in a band where the vocalist is such a presence.
Anyway, I still love ’em and listen to ’em now and again. Did someone say “reunion?”
UPDATE: Apparently Garside is still prolific and has a voice that’s even more amazing than I thought. It’s like if Tom Waits transferred his voice to a five year old girl. Raspy, childlike, thoughtful… and I feel pretty horrified at how attracted I am to this picture of her topless and wearing a horse-head: