Hearing Bratmobile again after so many dormant years had the effect of a Wellsian time machine, sending me back to my university salad days when I was a riot grrl: those heady, reckless, early '90s all-nighters spent hand-cranking mimeographed zines with names like Gender Slander and Myth America out of the basement of our flophouse, huffing the purple mimeo ink, the marches, the demonstrations... ah, takes me back.

No? Okay, instead, how about we appropriate that time machine to illustrate how Bratmobile have managed to leapfrog a seven-year split recording hiatus without so much as a stylistic hiccup? Alison Wolfe and Co. are back and haven't missed a 4/4 beat. Rip Van Winkle my ass!

Since 1991, Bratmobile have tottered on the fun edge of the riot grrl movement; there's as much B-52's as Dead Kennedys in their chapbook of influences. Living up to their punned moniker, Wolfe renders each track with a vocal sneer, with delivery usually following the same metric straitjacket. Meanwhile, Erin Smith provides consistently acute, triangular guitar threads. Bass? Come on, you know this is a treblefest.

"Gimme Brains," with its disarmingly catchy, handclap-laden chorus, roars over lyrics sporting some fairly vivid imagery: "Gimme brains for breakfast, baby/ And gimme more for lunch/ Throw me a bone for dinner/ A girl could starve on a boy like you." But the most patient rewards come with mid-tempo gems like "In Love with All My Lovers," "Well You Wanna Know What?" and the exhumed john doe, "Girlfriends Don't Keep," originally performed by Spook and the Zombies.

Of course, a couple of expendables stowed away on board, too. "Affection Training" seems to have suffered from a lack of attention in the formative years, and on "Cheap Trick Record," the humor just seems a little too pedestrian for Bratmobile.

Thematically, Ladies, Women and Girls is rife with conflict, usually between "girls" and "boys." But that's just dressing. The real ripostes come in lines like, "So the word on the street is that I'm fucking with you/ But did you ever think I don't think about you?" and "You're such a coward/ But it's alright 'cause you hide it so well/ You can not feel anything/ I care, so you win again."

This album provides a textbook return to form for Bratmobile, and after the long interruption, perhaps that's enough of a goal to achieve. Still, this is far from a future classic; it will not be venerated, dissected and wanked over for decades to come. But that's as much a victim of the zeitgeist as it is an indictment of the content. So many external factors are required for something to become the flashpoint of a movement. These days, there's still reason to be angry, but less likelihood of being swept along by the tsunami of revolutionary zeal-- the album would have been a completely different listen in 1991.

Instead, it's one record for which old fans will breathe a great sigh of relief upon hearing, perhaps even prompting misty-eyed nostalgia. From that certain shared perspective, nothing's changed too much. Bratmobile are still smart, funny and merciless, both musically and lyrically. They're still ladies, women and grrls.

-John Dark