Quids in! Bay Area sludge rockers Wealthy Women bring vivid satire and heavy riffs on brilliant debut album
Children, the debut album by San Francisco trio Wealthy Women, is the sound of a band surveying the world around them and reacting with searing sludge and incisive lyrics. Their dissatisfaction is understandable: since frontman and principal songwriter Peter Sisk moved from his native Ireland to the U.S. in 2017, neither his newfound home nor the wider world have been in the stablest of states. Under the circumstances, this scabrous tirade is a perfectly reasonable response – and thanks to a hefty dose of mordant wit, it’s highly enjoyable to boot.
The latter quality manifests itself with some lyrics worthy of mclusky (‘Why do you despise my atheist wife? / She’s nice!’) and, on Worst Date, the sort of first-person toxic masculinity narrative perfected by Pissed Jeans. A more harrowing form of satire is found on 37 Days, its tale of an Israeli attack on Palestinian paramedics including a chilling line right out of an IDF statement: ‘We operate in accordance with the law.’ Elsewhere, Wealthy Women evoke the harsh realities of modern America, with Take It Back voicing MAGA attitudes but has a twist in its tale, while Siege is written from the viewpoint of a certain despotic president.
Musically, the band hit hard with roiling riffage on Men Of The West, Atheist Wife’s hardcore concision and the Shellac-adjacent noise rock of Worst Date. Shit Breaks and the closing title track take a quieter approach, their hints of Slint or Lungfish suitably sombre given the respective subject matter of domestic abuse and children buried under wartime rubble. This remarkable album is a necessary snapshot of the unhappy state of the world in 2026, and an energising debut of rare impact.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Chat Pile, Shellac, mclusky
Children is out now.
