This just in from our old pals/arch-nemeses the Fatal Flaws. The deliciously curmudgeon-y local garage-rawkers recently collaborated on a track with a new(ish) Montreal outfit called the Broken Jugs for a compilation CD produced by Vancouver-based Mongrel zine. The title of the comp, which focuses on (really) underground Montréal bands is — and this is my second favorite part — Mongréal Zine. Nice. I love a good pun, almost as much as I love a bad one.

The track — this would be my first favorite part, for anyone keeping score — is entitled “She’s a Big Girl” and represents something of a departure from the grainy, lo-fi misanthropy we have come to know and love (and hate?) from the Flaws. As drummer Sasha Rodriguez puts it in a recent email, “It’s very different from the Fatal Flaws’ sound — much more of a sixties sound, and much more produced.”

And how.

I would go a step further and submit that this might be the sunniest little ditty Rodriguez and husband/guitarist/second coming of W.C. Fields, Chris Beneke have ever been a part of. (Granted, my sample size is admittedly small. Like, one album. For all I know they could have been in a Monkees cover band in a past life. But I digress.) And, much as I love the Flaws’ independent work — and believe me, I do — this song friggin’ rocks. In fact, I’d say this little blend of garage crunch and subversive pop sparkle is just about the perfect tune for a day like today, as summer, nearing its final throes, begins to surrender to the steely, ceaseless inevitability of fall. Or something like that.

Anyway, here’s the cut. I hope you enjoy it. 

Dan Bolles is a culture coeditor at Seven Days. He joined the paper in 2007 as its music editor, covering Vermont's robust music, comedy and nightlife scenes for a decade before deciding he was too old to be going to the Monkey House on weeknights to see rock shows for a living. He became assistant arts editor in 2017 and culture coeditor in 2021. Bolles has received numerous local and national awards for his writing on Vermont arts, sports and the occasional celebrity canine murder mystery. He loves...