Anna Minard claims to "know nothing about music." For this column, we force her to listen to random records by artists considered to be important by music nerds.

Cut
(Island)

When I first started this column, I listened to albums quickly, a few times, and then wrote first impressions. But as we've gone further, I find myself listening to them obsessively, a dozen times or more, reading all the lyrics and researching the bands and talking to everyone I meet about what they think. Still I am surprised almost every single time! I haven't learned nothing, but there's a long way to go. And part of the fun of it all is expecting one thing and getting something else. Often, when I express surprise or amazement, one of our resident music nerds is there to laugh and/or sigh prolongedly and/or try to teach me something about music history that is so convoluted I can't follow it.

Like who knew the Slits would be reggae? Pretty dang reggae, too! Like, talk-about-Babylon-more-than-once reggae. Apparently, reggae and punk in the UK in the '70s got married and had babies, like the Slits, because of something about young people, outsiders, and the working class.

Pissed-off feminists screaming is my favorite kind of screaming, so I was hoping there would be a banshee wail or two, and while it took till track 4, damn it's a good wail! (I thought until just now when I looked up the lyrics that the song was about a girl named "Joanna," but it's about shoplifting, and she's saying, "Do a runner." Knowledge is power.)

The weirdo party that is this album is complemented by plenty of strange whispers, screams, other people talking, and sound effects. "Newtown," after making up words like "televisina" and "footballina" (I think she's making drug names out of suburban pastimes?), sprinkles a bunch of sounds everywhere. The notes must've looked like "Sing 'Neeeeewtooooown,' drop a spoon, sing more, type on a typewriter, sing more, shake a box of beans." Audio collage!

"Ping Pong Affair" seems to enumerate all the reasons to stay home instead of going out: "So I spend an evening without getting my face cut/And another evening without getting run over/Again another evening without falling in love." Now that is some good advice, no? Stay home and eat ice cream and do craft projects! (Record nerds never leave the house, anyway.)

The Slits provide a great ragey soundtrack to the current blatantly antifeminist political climate, which makes me sad that the lead singer, Ari Up (aka Arianna Forster), died a couple of years ago. I highly recommend putting this album in your boom box and taking it to the park (after you've teased your hair A TON and put on some animal-print clothes). Then it's time to do feminist performance art! Or maybe just have a fierce picnic.

I give this a "let's drop some cutlery together" out of 10.