THE WINKS: The Winks
their first 7" vinyl (sold out)
$4.00
THE WINKS: Too Hot to be This Cool
their first CD with cool quicktime movie
$10.00
(Vinyl available through Rockin Bones Records.)
REVIEWS
The Winks 7"
NOW WAVE
The Winks: self-titled 7"
(Super Secret Records)
(REVIEW BY RUTLEDGE)
I hate to use a hackneyed expression like “old school punk”, but that’s what Austin, Texas’s Winks are. If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d believe that their debut 7” was a long-lost recording from some obscure LA punk band circa 1978. The press release compares these girls to The Bags. You know what they say: if the shoe fits...
All four of these tunes kick serious ass. The “hit” is “You’re Gonna Die”, a snotty, full-throttle scorcher worthy of any Killed By Death comp. These chicks dish out trashy, rockin’, mid-tempo punk with lots of fuck-you attitude. In this day & age when the term “punk rock” too often gets loosely applied to whiny emo dogshit and sanitized teenybopper drivel, it’s nice to hear a band playing REAL punk rock: raw, nasty three-chord tuneage delivered with amateurish, no-bullshit gusto. Penny Tration (of the great Dirty Sweets) is on guitar here, so it should come as no surprise that this band rules. And Amanda Hugnkiss is a BAD-ASS singer!
A little icing on the cake for all you self-respecting punk rock boys who spend your late nights jerking off to suicidegirls.com....you’re gonna go apeshit when you see how FUCKING HOT these gals are! Meow. The cover photo might make you cream your jeans....but it's the music that will keep you coming back for more.
---Lord Rutledge, opinionated asshole
From x2rr.com:
The Winks – Spoil Me/Sorry Baby/You’re Gonna Die/Fuck Me Around
Hot chicks, hot licks, they make the Donna’s look and sound like your ailin’ rat-faced granny. From the likes of these songs you can assume these chicks ain’t takin none of your shit. Kudos to Austin for producing yet another great rock n’ roll band.
W.I.N.K.S. CD - "Too Hot to be this Cool"
From Austin Chronicle:
The Winks
Too Hot to Be This Cool (Super Secret)
Imagine Tura Satana from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! starting a punk band after too many tallboys and you'll understand the eternal bad girl camp at the heart of this local endeavor. The women of the Winks cultivate a saucy, swaggering dynamic that keeps their otherwise straightforward approach to punk rock ticking. There's no wheel reinvention here, just a 20-minute nonstop burst of come-ons and put-downs. Penny Tration's guitar is surly and industrial, while Amanda Hugnkiss' artfully disaffected vox lie somewhere between sneer and pout, lending credence to the Winks' violently lascivious subject matter. You might call it "do me, asshole" feminism. "He's a Gun" kicks off with twin barrels of double-entendre declarations like, "He'll shoot it in my face all of the time," while "Fuck Me Around" celebrates one-night stands by adopting the horndog mentality of humping dumpers just out for a fling. "Never Gonna Die" vividly illustrates how one wrong move might send you from the bedroom to the embalming room before minutelong rock celebrations "Turn It Up" and "Saturday Night" reveal the band's less lurid side. There's even QuickTime footage of a live in-studio show for your viewing pleasure. Russ Meyer would've been proud.
From Now Wave:
The W.I.N.K.S.
Too Hot To Be This Cool
(Super Secret Records)
(REVIEW BY LORD RUTLEDGE)
Austin girls kick ass
The last time I reviewed The W.I.N.K.S., I did a half-assed job. Totally phoned it in. Tossed off a few cliches from the rockwriter handbook and knocked the whole thing out in less time than it takes me to down a bottle of Yuengling Lager. You know you're stretching when you have to resort to commenting on the autoerotic possibilities of the cover art.
So then! The W.I.N.K.S. are back with a fine debut album, and I'm determined to give them my very best effort. I've laid my crack pipe aside; I've turned off the books-on-tape version of Marquis De Sade's Incest that I've been blaring all morning. I've armed my manservant with a baseball bat and instructed him to turn away all visitors. It's time to get down to business, folks!
In this day and age when pretentious emocrap groups and candy-assed mall-core bands are constantly trying to pass themselves off as "punk rock", albums like Too Hot To Be This Cool are a breath of fresh hair (cliche...sorry!). Austin's W.I.N.K.S. cannot be pigeonholed or lumped into any of the various sub-scenes concocted by zine writers with nothing better to do. Simply put, they play good old punk rock. "Sorry Baby" and "Saturday Night" recall the South City trashpunk of the BobbyTeens and early Donnas. The blistering "You're Gonna Die" brings to mind The VKTMS and Deadly Weapons. "Never Gonna Die" wouldn't sound out of place on a CD compilation of classic punk songs from '77-'78. The album fires out one trashy, three-chord basher after another, never deviating from its basic, attitude-drenched formula. Thirteen songs blaze by in twentysome minutes.
Lead singer Amanda does what a lot of female punk vocalists aren't able to do---ooze toughness without sounding screechy or dyke-ish. She's got a snotty style in the classic punk tradition, her delivery owing as much to Johnny Rotten as it does to any iconic punkchick you could name. Probably couldn't sing her way out of a paper bag, but as a punk vocalist she does just fine. Guitarist Penny Traition (who also starred in the most excellent Dirty Sweets) bangs out the kind of stripped-down, pugilistic riff assault that's been fundamental to punk since The Ramones came first tearing out of Forest Hills three decades ago. I know, I know...it's "been done". And in all honesty, the material here isn't anything special. But like all the good punk bands do, The W.I.N.K.S. manage to take a seemingly tired musical formula and pump it full of life. There's something about their energy, their relentless attitude, the utter enthusiasm of their attack...something that reminds me of why I fell in love with punk rock in the first place and of why punk music will still be around long after we're all dead. You know what I mean: think about the most bloated, pompous, masturbatory music you've ever heard, and then imagine the total opposite of that. Buzzsaw guitars. Crude musicianship. Song titles like "You're So Hot" and "Fuck Me Around". Intentionally stupid lyrics. "But every song sounds the same!" you say. Exactly!
Too Hot To Be This Cool treads all-too-familiar territory yet still comes out a winner. It works because it feels so genuine, because it's played with the sort of driving youthful gusto that cannot be faked. Consequently, it reaches a part of me that subtler forms of music could never begin to touch. Because we all feel pissed off from time-to-time, because society is teeming with dickheads and assholes and douche bags and jerkoffs who need to be put in their place, because none of us ever loses the need to say "fuck you" to someone every now and then, the world will always need records like this one.
---Lord Rutledge, opinionated asshole
May 16, 2005