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The Gymslips: Rocking with the Renees 12” (original 1983, Abstract Records; reissue 2022, Optic Nerve Recordings)
I love an infectiously poppy old school punk record, and this expanded reissue of the Gymslips’ 1983 album Rocking with the Renees has been my go-to lately. It’s also an appropriate time for this pick because I learned about this album from an episode of What Are You Listening To?, where it was one of the host Mike’s picks, and I’m going to be on WAYLT? this Friday. (The show is live-streamed and there’s a chat where viewers can interact with the host and guests. It’s a lot more fun when people participate, so join us at 10PM Eastern US time on Friday, March 1 (2024 in case you’re reading this in the future). There’s a link for it already, and I invite you to click the bell to get a notification when the show starts.) WAYLT? has introduced me to a bunch of great, new-to-me music lately (Cathedral’s Forest of Equilibrium has been melting my brain… thanks Matt Miner!), and maybe it’ll do the same for you.
My description of the Gymslips will crib heavily from what Mike said about the band and record, as he really hit the nail on the head. The gist of it is that the Gymslips were an all-woman indie-pop band from England in the vein of bands like Dolly Mixture, Shop Assistants, or Girls at Our Best, usually upbeat and punky, sometimes dreamy, energetic but not “hard,” and with huge singalong pop hooks. The twist is that the Gymslips were skinheads, and many of their songs are about lowbrow concerns like eating, drinking, fucking, trying to look cool, not giving a fuck, and so on and so forth. There’s also a lot of bootboy (bootgirl?) glam in the mix, including a solid cover of Suzi Quatro’s “48 Crash,” and when those influences are near the surface, the Gymslips remind me of the Boys. Some songs are stronger than others, but there are no skippers, and the great songs are fucking great. I can’t get enough of it lately.
One thing that intrigued me about the Gymslips when Mike described them is that they have a kind of philosophy. The album is called Rocking with the Renees, and the song “Renees” outlines the Renee lifestyle. Renees—a tribe that, judging by the album’s artwork, the Gymslips count themselves as members—are helpfully defined on the back cover:
Definition of a Renee (Plural - Renees)
Appearance - slightly rotund, double chin, in most cases short hair
Diet: excessive alcohol, pie and mash
Clothing: jeans, monkey boots, denim jacket (leather in winter), T-shirt
Habits: most disgusting things
The male counterparts are known as Ronees
We might chafe at parts of that today, but I love that the Gymslips are about getting out of your head and just having fun in the here and now.
In another interesting twist, when I was talking about this band with Jeff the other day, he mentioned he had heard of the Gymslips before Mike talked about them on WAYLT?, but he only knew their 1985 EP and he thought of them as a goth band. It turns out I’d already heard these three songs when I first checked out Gymslips on streaming, as they appear as bonus tracks on Rocking with the Renees. The sound changes quite a bit on that last single, but it’s still upbeat and poppy. And the best part of this era of the band might be their outstanding low-budget video for “Evil Eye” where the band looks cool as fuck.
If the Gymslips sound like an interesting proposition, you have a few options. An expanded reissue of Rocking with the Renees that contains most (all?) of their studio tracks is available on streaming services, which is nice. The version I have on Optic Nerve Recordings is also currently in print. I’ll see if I can get a small stack for Sorry State. Discogs says that originals aren’t too expensive, but a wait for a right-priced copy might be long. For me, the quick fix factor and that it comes with the hard to find bonus 7” swayed me in favor of the reissue.