While female solo artists have provided some of the most striking music industry success stories of recent years, girl bands have barely featured on the rock ‘n' roll radar. But the four gorgeous Parisiennes (average age 21) on stage at London's Borderline club look determined to change that by force if necessary.
Plastiscines are part-way through a rambunctious cover of These Boots are Made for Walking, and singer and guitarist Katty Besnard (who looks like she has just shimmied off the poster for Antonioni's 1966 film Blow-Up) has turned dominatrix: "Are you ready?" she yells, sternly. The men populating the front row, many d'un certain age and keen photographers, respond enthusiastically, but Besnard repeats her question over and over until the rest of the crowd do likewise.
"If people don't do what I want when I'm on stage, I get angry," she had explained sweetly. Plastiscines have been playing together since they were 17, forming after school friends Besnard and Marine Neuilly (guitar; a feral beauty with unbrushed hair) met Louise Basilien (bass; Anne Hathaway's rebel younger sister) at a Libertines gig in 2004. They mastered their instruments onstage, playing their Blondie and Strokes-influenced garage rock as part of a youthful Parisian scene.
‘Aggressive guitars'
Says Neuilly: "One of our songs was called Speed. It was just one minute of ‘woooooah'. We were a bit crazy. Hopefully now we're different."
While they maintain a primal energy playing live ("I fell off stage two days ago," Besnard says), Plastiscines have indeed acquired some polish. Last April they became the first signing to a record label set up by US style magazine NYLON and recorded their second album, About Love, with Katy Perry producer Butch Walker. Delivered mostly in accented English, the record — while not jaw-droppingly inventive — successfully melds an infectious girl-band pop sound (the Shangri-Las and the Marvelettes were reference points) with "really aggressive guitars".
NYLON's stylists dreamt up a trashily glamorous look to match their vintage sound — the video to one song, Barcelona, is a riot of high-end PVC, thigh-high boots and winged eyeliner.
Today, sleep-deprived and un-showered following their soundcheck, they regret that such standards are difficult to maintain on tour: "We used to take so much care of ourselves," sighs Neuilly, still exuding a grubby sort of chic.
Their fashion-darling status was confirmed when they were invited to perform on an episode of Gossip Girl, the US television show about Manhattan's privileged teens. Playing their razor-tongued anthem Bitch was a landmark moment. "It was, like, wow, I'm on Gossip Girl! It's a huge thing for a French band to be on an American TV show," Neuilly says.
They had written the song as a retort to those "who think we are a fake band of really rich girls. Our families have normal jobs — my dad's a driver, my mum works in an office," says Bes-nard.
The band still feels they need to prove themselves "every day".
Basilien says: "At the beginning we didn't consider ourselves feminist, but we've discovered being four girls in the music industry is not an easy thing."
"Male journalists always ask us, are you playing on the album?" adds Bes-nard, indignantly. "We only started as a girl band because we didn't have a lot of male friends.
"Now it would be so weird to have a boy in the band. It would never work."
