Review: Lambrini Girls at The Rechabite
Lambrini Girls at The Rechabite
w/ Big Wett
Sunday, March 1, 2026
Security outside The Rechabite were checking bags with all the seriousness of people expecting a riot. Funny how punk still triggers that reflex—the idea that raised voices and mosh pits must inevitably equal violence.
Inside, the hall glowed under strips of hot-pink LEDs while hyperpop glitches buzzed through the speakers. The bar leant hard into the night’s theme, advertising “Lambrini Girls drink specials” like Wet Pussy and Juicy Puss—an odd bit of merchandising that felt less like reclamation than commodification. Even rebellion, it seemed, could be monetised.
The night began with raucous Australian support Big Wett, arriving in a hot-pink fur coat, sunglasses and leopard-print bikini bottoms beneath a cropped jersey declaring “Alpha Male”. Tone set.
There was no band, just pounding electronic tracks and the self-proclaimed “Number 1 Pussy in the Club” delivering vocals somewhere between hyperpop chants and drag ecstasy. The energy was relentless: slogan-like lyrics, club beats that barely let the room breathe, and an aesthetic amplifying sexuality until it bordered on farce. Not quite in the fairy-trap territory of Zheani, but somewhere adjacent.
At one point Big Wett returned wielding a bright pink strap-on dildo, theatrically lubricating it before thrusting into the crowd. Excessive, messy and oddly compelling—it was a chaotic, hyperfeminine performance art echoing Peaches and electroclash provocateurs. The crowd, particularly the cluster of men near the barricade, was far from scandalised. (Thanks, mate, for leaning into my ear to tell me how empowering it all was—before staring blankly when I mentioned Peaches.)
If Big Wett explored sexuality through camp exaggeration, Lambrini Girls arrived with a far more punk-inflected purpose.
As the unmistakable spirit of The Teaches of Peaches pulsed through the PA, Phoebe Lunny stormed onstage and immediately began rearranging the room. “Did you come here to see a punk show??!”
The pit split open before the first song properly began. Bad Apple and Company Culture followed in rapid succession, mirroring the opening run of Who Let The Dogs Out but looser and more volatile live. Lunny conducted the audience like an agitator with a megaphone—pulling people apart and reading the room with a strategist’s eye.
Visually, the band presented a sharp hybrid of punk and femme rock iconography—ripped stockings, lingerie-styled outfits and white go-go boots—but any hint of softness evaporated quickly.
“No more baby shit, Perth! We didn’t come here to fuck spiders.” Funny to hear Australian colloquialisms thrown back through Lunny’s Brighton burr, the faintest plum-in-the-mouth that betrayed the band’s UK lineage.
Lunny repeatedly waded into the pit, collapsing the hierarchy between stage and floor and handing the mic to punters in the thick of it. A mock meditative breathing exercise briefly threatened calm before the rug was pulled out entirely. “Good, because meditation is really fucking stupid!” she barked, orchestrating a venue-wide primal scream.
During Mr Lovebomb, Lunny, asking for our trust, climbed from the pit to the venue’s upper tier before she launched herself from the balcony into the crowd below. It was a genuinely radical moment: not the calculated stage dive of punk cliché but something far more feral. Bodies surged to catch her, hands raised like a congregation.
Moments later she checked in: “Everyone okay?”
Brutality followed immediately by care.
From the kit, their drummer mouthed every lyric while hammering through the set—a small but telling detail that made the band feel less like a frontperson spectacle and more like a collective sermon.
Politically, the set proved sharper than the laddish chaos of much contemporary punk. During God’s Country, Lunny asked the room whether we hated Great Britain. The crowd obliged with a spontaneous chant of “Fuck the King!” before she pivoted sharply: “Always was, always will be.” In Boorloo, the line landed hard.
The gig soon resembled a temporary political assembly. Palestinian and Trans flags appeared in the crowd and were draped across the amp stacks as “Trans lives matter” rippled through the room. Later, introducing Boys in the Band, Lunny and bassist Lilly Macieira spoke candidly about sexual abuse within the Brighton music scene and asked whether similar experiences existed here. The roar of recognition from the floor was immediate.
Yet the room didn’t collapse—smiles rained down from the upper tiers each time the pit opened at Lunny’s command.
Musically, the trio distilled punk to its essentials—bass, guitar, drums and an uncompromising vocal—but the DNA was unmistakably British. Less blunt-force hardcore than wiry, danceable punk, with the ghost of X-Ray Spex lurking somewhere in the scaffolding.
It invited comparison with Amyl and the Sniffers, whose feral stage presence has become synonymous with Australia’s current punk export boom. Yet where Amyl’s energy leans into coke-fuelled pub-chaos aesthetics, Lambrini Girls operate with sharper political focus and a stronger sense of collective responsibility.
By the time the band reached Craig David—a perfectly calibrated call-and-response that descended into a roaring “Fuck Fascists” chant—Lunny had the room exactly where she wanted it. Presenting three options—a human pyramid, collectively defiling the floor, or the biggest mosh pit the venue had ever seen—felt less like a choice than an invitation.
Closing with the dance-punk manifesto Cuntology 101, Macieira crowd-surfed while the Girls led the audience in a gleefully profane chant reclaiming a word historically weaponised against women. When they returned for a brief encore—Big Dick Energy—the room was already euphoric. Unlike the song’s punchline, the passion for these women and their ferocious point of view really was that big.
CAT LANDRO
Photos by Adrian Thomson
