[Blame Sally: (left to right) Pam, Renée, Monica, Jeri]

The Web site for this singer-songwriter quartet just lays the question out there: “Listen once to Blame Sally’s new album, and you’ll immediately wonder, ‘where did these guys come from?'” (The “these guys” is a maybe-kidding colloquialism — the band includes not even one real guy.)

That same page lays out three theories:

Theory 1:
Some time in 1998, Joan Jett meets Annie Lennox at a Lower East Side bar, where they discover mutual infatuations with Pabst Blue Ribbon and Fleetwood Mac. After downing six beers and treating the crowd to a killer version of Crystal, the two drive to Vermont, get married, and ask The Edge to donate sperm for their first child. For nine months, Joan and Annie soothe their child in utero with a mix tape of Mavis Staples, early Beatles, and Lucinda Williams. That child is Blame Sally.

Theory 2:
David Crosby, David Hidalgo, and Patty Griffin find themselves seated together on a flight to New York. During a storm, a freak surge of electricity scrambles their iPods, melts the hard drives, but magically disassembles and fuses the playlists…

Theory 3:
In 1999, in a little-known but epic logistical meltdown, the Lilith Fair and OzzFest are accidentally booked into the same Indiana venue on the same hot August night. While Paula Cole and Rob Zombie wrestle for control of the venue, fans — including the 4 members of Blame Sally — are blown away by the unusual blend of black metal and estrogen-tinged folk…

Theory 1 reproduced in its entirety above. For the complete versions of Theories 2 and 3, see the About page. And don’t stop there; be sure to read their individual bios, to which (along the top) it links. These guys do love their lists, don’t they?

I’ll be honest — and interpret this how you will — from the moment I laid eyes on them, I liked them, together and severally. Of course, since I am who I am, they also scared me. They seem, well, awesome (in the original “archaic” sense, per dictionary.com: having the “power to inspire inspire fear or reverence”). They seem strong and confident. And they form the sort of secret circle — impermeable to bearers of the Y chromosome — which always makes me half-suspect they’re whispering not about me specifically, but about men in general, and good luck to any guy-guy who presumes to “get” them.* Then they blend together their words and music, their voices and their instruments, and my mind pretty much shuts down altogether.

Say a phrase like “a sorta-country sorta-folkie sorta-pop all-girl group” and you invite comparisons to, oh, say, the Dixie Chicks. But no, I don’t think that’s right. Blame Sally is what the Dixie Chicks might have dreamed of becoming without their young success: a good-natured shot of rye, not a Jägerdew.

The aforementioned most recent CD is called Speeding Ticket and a Valentine, a title which I’d love to have come up with on my own. But it’s not even the title of one of their songs; it’s a single line from one: “Living Without You.”

[Below, click Play button to begin Living Without You. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:34 long.]

Lyrics:

Living Without You
(Blame Sally)

I’m a hacker I’m a con, I can’t even write a song
I can’t sing a note if you paid me
No one home, always gone, never right always wrong
And I haven’t got a God who can save me

But I’m living without you, living without you
I’m living without you, living without you

I’m a loner, I’m unkind, I’m a prisoner in my mind
I’m exhausted long before the sunrise
I’m a skeptic and dissatisfied with everything I find
I’m as bitter as a gin and quinine

But I’m living without you, living without you
I’m living without you, living without you

Sweet and sour at the same time
Mink and a porcupine
Speeding ticket and a valentine

I’m a liar, I’m a cheat, I don’t say what I mean
I used to care about the world around me
Lost to a thief on a dry winter leaf
I wouldn’t know love if it found me

But I’m living without you, living without you
I’m living without you, living without you
But I’m living without you, living without you
I’m living without you, living without you

Sweet and sour at the same time
Mink and a porcupine
Speeding ticket and a valentine
Acid and alkaline

I haven’t got a God who can save me: that’s a subtle assertion, leagues away from the plainer version which lacks the clinching restrictive clause; its construction says as much about the songwriter(s) as about the fictional narrator. And the exuberant, heartfelt harmonies of the refrain complement so nicely the verses’ sardonic voice, no?

Below, from 2009’s Night of 1000 Stars, here’s the video for “Jumpstart”:

[Lyrics (open in new window)]

__________________________

*  I talked about this imagined line between the sexes, and what goes on on its far side, in a post last year.