The Slits

Cut (1979)

Cut sets punk's jagged guitars against dub bass and loose, rolling drums, so the whole record sounds both tense and relaxed. "Typical Girls" turns a list of what women are supposed to be into a sneering chant over a bouncing, off-kilter rhythm. Dennis Bovell's production leaves enormous space around each instrument, which lets Ari Up's yelps and Viv Albertine's scratchy guitar sound improvised and alive. It endures because it proved a band could ignore the rules of both punk and reggae and make something new from both.

Sleeve notes

Cut · 1979

The Slits formed in London in 1976 when fourteen-year-old Ari Up teamed up with drummer Palmolive after a Patti Smith gig. Tessa Pollitt joined on bass and Viv Albertine on guitar, and the band learned to play in public, opening for the Clash on their 1977 tour while most of the audience was still working out what to make of four young women who sounded nothing like punk's usual snarl. Palmolive left in 1978 for the Raincoats and was replaced by Budgie.

Cut, their 1979 debut, produced by dub engineer Dennis Bovell, folded reggae and dub into punk's rawness. Return of the Giant Slits followed in 1981 before they split. Albertine later became a filmmaker and wrote a celebrated memoir, and Ari Up reformed the group with Pollitt in 2006 until her death in 2010. Riot grrrl bands from Bikini Kill to Bratmobile counted them among the first to show that women could make a free, strange noise and call it music.