Bad Credit No Credit – Hey, Rube! EP

Carrie Anne Murphy has a bone to pick — with boys, girls, bullshit, machines, clubs; you name it. Fronting the Brooklyn five-piece Bad Credit No Credit, she spits, croons, and growls her way through five tight songs on the band’s excellent debut EP Hey, Rube! with a voice that rivals the boom of Shilpa Ray’s. With support from instruments ranging from slide whistles, tubas, melodicas, saxophones, clarinets, and flutes, her voice dominates the burlesque/ chamber sounds that emanate from the group. Her vocals run the gamut from booming in “Beltway 8” to the sweet longing of “Winter Waltz” and everything in between.  Live, her presence is undeniable and quite arresting; on record, listeners obviously can’t see the indignant stomping and laser stare that Murphy owns, but somehow she transfered the stomping and straining that fly from her body on stage to this disc.

Her voice doesn’t shit on the band’s very capable backing, though. She manipulates her singing to coax out and augment the meaning of a song, not crush it into the ground like a cigarette. Drummer/ tuba player Abram Morphew deftly handles the percussion and low end with sparse integrity, while Andrew Thomas and Elaine Haswell add subtle layers of color to the “marching band on acid” songs here.  Though most songs feature all five musicians, “Whorgin” gets the most sparing treatment on Hey, Rube! and evokes the aura of a smoky jazz club from the days of yore with a simply trumpet line flitting in and out of the empty spaces.

“Boys’ Club” is the best track on the EP, combining all the best elements of Bad Credit No Credit’s sound. The sax and flute melody hooks listeners from the onset, and words like “You think I condescend/ you want me complacent/ you want to tell me how it is/ you want to call me ‘baby’” aim to cut swaths through a male-dominated scene. Here, Murphy’s anger is most palpable, bordering on discomfort for listeners. But it’s this characteristic that makes this song specifically and Bad Credit No Credit in general so relatable for both girls and boys. Hey, Rube! rings an alarm, one that screams that Murphy is not to be fucked with, and that she and her musical cronies are a force to be reckoned.