Modern Woman Find Their Form in Controlled Fury

Rage, when it arrives with clarity, can structure an entire record. On their debut Johnny’s Dreamworld, London quartet Modern Woman have built something that doesn’t just express fury. It examines it, turns it over, and finds the precise point where it cuts deepest.

Frontwoman Sophie Harris, a literature graduate, writes with a plainness that lands harder than theatricality ever could. The opening title track moves on a sonorous bassline as Harris speaks and sings with casual precision, dropping references to New Jersey like geographic markers on a map of grievances. There’s a debt here to King Hannah’s Hannah Merrick, but Modern Woman push the sound into heavier territory fast.

The band wears influences openly and without apology. The Slits, riot grrrl bands like Heavens to Betsy, early Wolf Alice. PJ Harvey’s Dry echoes through the album’s loud-quiet dynamics, though Modern Woman never settle into imitation. “Neptune Girl” carries the weight of Black Country, New Road’s debut in its undulating structure, then buries it under murderous screams of jealousy when the narrator reveals a lover chose someone else in New England.

What makes the record hold is its control. “Offerings” skitters along on a bassline that could sit on a 1990s Nick Cave record, pizzicato violin threading through the arrangement. But the band never lets chaos take over. Even at their most abrasive, the songs feel shaped, deliberate.

Harris’s guttural screams don’t arrive as catharsis alone. They read as argument, the personal spilling directly into political terrain without needing to announce itself. Modern Woman’s name speaks to the present, but their music pulls from decades of women who understood that a well-placed roar can reorganize a room. Johnny’s Dreamworld earns its combativeness. Nothing here begs for your attention. It simply expects it.