Cocktail Slippers: Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre

For a buncha gals posing as badass, gun-totin’ dames on their cover of Saint. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the ladies of the Cocktail Slippers sure are boy-dependent on their third disc. On the title track, penned by Little Steven van Zandt (more about him in a moment), frontwoman Modesty Blaze rends her garments worrying, “Am I still penciled in your calendar?” and pouts and coos her way through “Love Me Back” with “I love you but you don’t love me back”. Elsewhere, our Norwegian fivesome do everything you’d expect on an album produced, svengali-style (in addition to writing the title track and “Heard You Got a Thing For Me”, he plays bongos on the album, and released the record on his Wicked Cool imprint), by van Zandt — a little Go-Go’s aping here, courtesy of the “Our Town”-redux “In

the City”; a little ’60s girl-garage there, with the Ellie Greenwich/Jeff Barry-penned “Don’t Ever Leave Me”. It’s all perfectly serviceable Eurogarage-pop, but necessary only for folks loudly wondering when the next Sahara Hotnights album will drop or who are cardcarrying members of van Zandt’s Underground Garage Nation.