Poison Girls

Emerging from Britain's punk scene, the Poison Girls operated as a male backing ensemble built around vocalist and guitarist Vi Subversa, whose probing examinations of sexuality and gender conflicts anticipated the riot grrrl wave that arrived in the 1990s. Their first album, Hex, appeared in 1979 under the production of Crass drummer Penny Rimbaud, who also helmed the follow-up Chappaquiddick Bridge the next year. Although the guitar-driven arrangements on these releases remained understated, Subversa's words delivered sharp commentary on politics, conformity, romance, and feminism with equal measures of anger and insight.

Following the 1981 live set Total Exposure, captured during a Scottish performance and intended merely as an interim release, the group resurfaced in 1982 with Where's the Pleasure. The record displayed a markedly more polished and refined approach, as Subversa narrowed her lyrical focus exclusively to sexual themes. With the 1983 EP I'm Not a Real Woman, the band largely shed its punk origins in favor of Celtic folk vocals and cabaret-inflected pop; by 1985's Songs of Praise, traces of funk had begun to surface in the arrangements.

The Poison Girls disbanded in the late 1980s. In 1996 the four-CD collection Statement: The Complete Recordings 1977-1989 documented their full history.