Racine 2 is the ingeniously named second album by Racine, an Anglo-American band fronted by Brit Wendy James. It is hard to define Racine’s sound; the album is a Juxtaposition of rock and a fair amount of roll, pop, punk, electro and occasionally indie. Wendy’s vocals are pretty diverse too- she’s a rock babe, a French lady, a pop star, a loose-lipped lyricist and also just a really talented singer. Sometimes these vocals are irritating, yet at other times I found Wendy’s vocal range enjoyable. A particularly enjoyable track is Bobby’s going electric in which she talks the lyrics so quickly they roll off her tongue in indefinable words.

If Racine 2 was to be categorized we could probably label it as pop-rock. It’s occasional hard rock and roll electrics are balanced out by Wendy’s pop influence that she’s bought from her days in 80’s band Transvision Vamp. Actually, we will label this as ‘bitch-rock’! This album is packed with girl-power, including lyrics such as “come on speak your peace you double crossing chimpanzee, come on start swinging and I’ll crush you like a wormy apple”. Wendy’s lyrics seem to be highly involved with her 42 years of personal love life dilemmas and problems with men (or chimpanzees- whatever floats your boat love) which, call me bitter, I find really exasperating and boring. At least she’s bitching about men, throwing around more F words than Gordon Ramsey, rather than applauding them, that is always good!

This album is sexy (notably track three, again cleverly named Racine in which Wendy goes all French on us). Oh a perfect Valentines pressie to go with your stomach turning Hallmark cards! My favourite track Bobby’s going electric would be an interesting soundtrack to your Valentines evening. “Swing that ass and I’m on my way” which is repeated several times over became personally a little risky during standing moments on public transport, where there was always a fear of spontaneous, uncontrollable ass swinging! This is a great upbeat song but there are many skip-able ones within the album, particularly the slower ones.

Racine 2 concludes on the good note of Bitter Funny- a song about a whorehouse or drugs or something, with the hard-hitting intro “Hey numbnuts you forgot something, I got my pot, my pills and my pussy god damn it”! This is a great song, but I don’t think this album is great. Some of Racine 2 will be lucky enough to be salvaged from my itunes trash and live a life on my ipod, only some however, and who knows maybe I’ll be keen to force myself to grow to like some of Racine 3…