Hello folks,

A strange week eh! Hope you are all keeping safe.

We're starting the pre-sale for the new 7” single by Danish/Brazilian garage sensations The Courettes!

For more on the band and their mighty fine new disc read on below!

All being well the release date is May 22nd, but obviously this could change given the current situation.

Click on the cover art below to reserve your copy!

The Courettes - Want You! Like a Cigarette - Ltd Red Vinyl 7" (500 copies)

 

New 7” single from latest DG signings!

“The real deal. The most authentic '60s inspired garage rock since Thee Milkshakes were around”.

Lee Cotterell (Vive Le Rock)

The Courettes are a garage duo sensation from Brazil and Denmark!

One of the most hard working bands on the scene, The Courettes have been busy delivering their full-speed energetic performances (more than 250 concerts!) in 15 countries around Europe and Brazil.

Aside from their touring The Courettes have been hard at work at their own StarrSound Studios working on new songs for their as yet untitled third album, to be released later this year by Damaged Goods. This brand new limited edition single is taken from those sessions and is a great taster of things to come!

The duo's previous single releases include the Spector-esque single 'Christmas (I Can Hardly Wait)', a girlie pop Christmas anthem filled with fuzzed out guitars and trashy jingle bells (released by Danish label Crunchy Frog) and 'Too Late To Say I'm Sorry' 7” EP with four killer tracks recorded/mixed by Liam Watson at ToeRag Studios (released by Portuguese label Groovie Records). And not forgetting the explosive single 'Boom! Dynamite!' (Bachelor Records, Austria, 2016), and 'Hoodoo Hop', a split with Powersolo (Sounds of Subterrania, Germany, 2017)

Previous albums include Here are the Courettes (Sounds of Subterrania, Germany, 2015), a shaking live album Alive from Tambourine Studios (Chaputa Records, Portugal, 2017), and the second studio album, We Are The Courettes (Sounds of Subterrania, Germany, 2018).



GARAGE DUO SENSATION THE COURETTES SIGN WITH
UK’S LEGENDARY PUNK ROCK garage LABEL DAMAGED GOODS

“We’re so proud of it. Damaged Goods is the Godfather of British garage punk.” says The Courettes’ Danish drummer Martin Couri of the band’s signing with the British label. “This is such a big thing,” adds Flávia Couri, The Courettes’ Brazil-born guitarist and singer. “And, we´re the first Danish or Brazilian band on Damaged Goods”.

The first Courettes record for Damaged Goods will be May’s “Want You! Like A Cigarette”/ “Night Time (The Boy Of Mine)” single. This extraordinary 45 marries a super-charged pop top side to a charging, rampaging flip. As Martin puts it, “The tunes are teen-trash garage meets The Ronettes and Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios. We added jingle bells and tambourines and went ‘Back To Mono’ style for two dance-floor killers where a Wall Of Sound makes the songs really blast out of the speakers.” The band’s new album – their third studio set – will follow in October. Such a formidable single means the album will be a landmark release.

Since their first record – July 2015’s Here Are The Courettes album – the Denmark-dwelling Courettes haven’t stopped. There was March 2018’s follow-up album We Are The Courettes, the live Alive From Tambourine Studios, issued between the two, and a string of irresistible, power-packed, tune-stuffed singles, the most recent of which was late 2019’s pounding girl group-influenced monster “Christmas (I Can Hardly Wait)”. Live, they always hit home. I once wrote “The Courettes full-bore attack would do any festival proud.” and Rolling Stone’s David Fricke raved “The real sound of now busting through my door, new songs that keep kicking the history forward. I can’t imagine my turntable without The Courettes.” Signing with Damaged Goods helps spread the word more widely than ever.

Damaged Goods’ first record was a November 1988 reissue of Slaughter & The Dogs’ punk classic “Where Have All The Bootboys Gone?” Although the label was initially dedicated to reissues, fresh releases soon arrived. In July 1992, the joint Thee Headcoatees and Thee Headcoats “Headcoat Girl”/”Lakota Woman” was released – the beginning of the label’s long-running relationship with cultural whirlwind Billy Childish. Manic Street Preachers were picked up before anyone else. Buzzcocks came on board. So did Dan Treacy’s Television Personalities. More recently, Amyl and the Sniffers reached out beyond Australia with Damaged Goods. Flávia and Martin are joining this pantheon.

This significant, vital label has always been on their radar. Flávia recalls that when she was in Brazil “the first band I encountered on Damaged Goods were Billy Childish’s Thee Headcoats. Then I found out Billy was also with The Buff Medways. And I had a tape from a friend of his old band The Milkshakes. When I got all the connections it was – wow, a whole network! For me though, Thee Headcoatees were the first to make an impact. It was so cool to have a female band, cool guitar sounds and vocals, how they sang together – naïve, wild, a little blasé.” For Martin, the Headcoatees-related Delmonas are a perpetual musical touchstone. The fusion of the female voice, a garage-rock attack and up-front tunes which underpinned Thee Headcoatees and Delmonas is wired-in to The Courettes’ DNA.

Also crucial to the band’s make-up is what else happened on the journey to where they are today. Flávia recalls that “I started listening to bands like The Seeds when I was about 12 years old and I thought I was the only one doing so in Brazil. Then I was at a Ramones show when I was 13. It was at one of the biggest venues in Rio and even though I was the only freak in my school it was packed with all these misfits. There was a whole generation who had same discoveries as me.”

Martin explains “I was always into the Sixties. A big love for it. It comes totally naturally. I love how the sounds were overdriven, badly recorded! The wildness, the wild feeling all the time. The rebelliousness of the music. I discovered garage music and loved the sub-culture. In Denmark there was beat stuff in the Sixties but the scene was very short lived, only a few years. “Barbed wire music’ it was called in Denmark.” The Courettes have discovered their music crosses borders. “We are a half-Danish, half-Brazilian band; and though we´re settled in Denmark, we´ve been playing all around Europe, and there are rock n´roll lovers in the whole world,” notes Flávia. “Our experience is that garage rock has bigger audiences in Germany and Spain, for example, than in Denmark. And our second album got especially good reviews in the UK.” British music monthly Vive Le Rock declared We Are The Courettes was by a band playing “the most authentic ‘60s-inspired garage rock since The Milkshakes.” Shindig marvelled at how The Courettes “conjure up such a wall of sonic combustion.”

The momentum and critical acclaim suggested to Flávia and Martin that they might have a chance with the totemic Damaged Goods. There was nothing to lose. “We made a list of the top three labels we would like to work with,” reveals Martin. “Number one was Damaged Goods. OK, we’ll try. They were the only ones we sent our albums to. We had no expectations. They came back to us and Ian Ballard, Damaged Goods’ founder, was very happy with the records we sent. So we started seriously talking.”

“Once we got a live review in a Danish magazine saying that under the garage surface, one could hear The Courettes have total control of the anatomy of a pop song. This is the best compliment we could have had, that´s exactly what we´re up to do” says Flávia.

This gets to the heart of The Courettes – the Sixties-loving, girl-group-influenced garage band which is, above all, a pop group. Flávia and Martin breach boundaries and fuse differences to make a thrilling whole. Being Brazilian or Danish doesn’t matter when they enthral audiences and listeners. By hooking up with Britain’s Damaged Goods, they cross borders. Watch out. Wherever you are, The Courettes will be knocking on your door. With Damaged Goods’ help, The Courettes are coming through.

By Kieron Tyler

Keep safe, stay groovy!

Ian & Duncan