Have you been looking for a new rock & roll role model -- someone blessed with cool, street smarts, and attitude to spare who also has a killer voice and solid instincts? Don't look now, but her name is
Kristen Cooper, and she sings lead and plays bass in
the Flytraps, a rockin' combo from Orange County, California, whose first proper album, 2020's
Wild Card, is a soul-satisfying blast of hard-rockin' attitude, howling guitars, and
Cooper's flamethrower vocals. While she's far from the first garage punk acolyte who has tapped into her inner
Tura Satana, she's a lot better than most: her articulate snarl shows no mercy and manages to sound dangerous but welcoming on "Female of the Species," perverse on "Baby's a Freak," and hell-bent on wild good times on "Action."
Cooper may be center stage on
Wild Card, but her bandmates do more than their share to give her the raw power she needs.
Beth Boyd and
Chloe Z. Young are a heavyweight tag-team guitar combination, setting up a Wall of Sound that brings together the band's punk, garage, and hard rock influences with high style and enough crunch for a year's supply of corn flakes, while drummer
Fabian Ruiz manages to not only keep up with these troublemakers, he gives them the fuel to push this music into orbit. You could say that
the Flytraps are mining a sound and style that have been around since
the Runaways bought their first guitars, and you wouldn't be wrong, but any story can sound fresh if it's told in the right way, and
Wild Card tells the tale like a master. These 12 songs are a beckoning invitation to all manner of pleasures the authority figures have warned you about, and with
Kristen Cooper as their pied piper,
the Flytraps will take you on the ride of your life. Bring some bail money and you'll be just fine. ~ Mark Deming
