VIA PRESS RELEASE | Third Man Records is proud to announce the first-ever live anthology from Ann Arbor, MI-based noise rock legends, Laughing Hyenas.
That Girl – Live Recordings 1986–1994 collects 18 ferocious tracks—painstakingly compiled by founding member John Brannon from his personal archive of cassette tapes and then transferred, mixed, and mastered by GRAMMY® Award-winning producer Bobby Emmett (Sturgill Simpson, Jack White, The Sights)—that showcase the band’s full-on sonic groove assault in its purest, most unadulterated and gloriously abrasive form.
Highlights include such hard-hitting classics as “Here We Go Again,” recorded live for NYC’s famed WNYU in 1990 and premiering today at all DSPs and streaming services. That Girl – Live Recordings 1986–1994 arrives via TMR digitally and on 2xLP colored vinyl (with Limited Edition 7”) on Friday, February 20. Pre-orders/pre-saves are available now.
If ever a band deserved an LP of live material, it’s the Laughing Hyenas. As Wolf Eyes’ Aaron Dilloway so eloquently put it, “The Laughing Hyenas were the scariest band I have ever seen.”
With their roots firmly planted in Detroit’s Cass Corridor punk rock and hardcore scene of the early ’80s, John Brannon (Negative Approach) and Larissa Strickland (L-Seven), along with the locked-in rhythm section of bassist Kevin Strickland and drummer Jim Kimball (and later, former Necros bassist Ron Sakowski and drummer Todd Swalla), the Laughing Hyenas took aggressive rock ‘n’ roll to a completely different plane.
Taking pointers from The Birthday Party and Funhouse-era Stooges as well as early blues and jazz artists, the band unleashed a fierce, sulfuric blast of noise all their own. The sinister and hypnotic bass riffs and tribal swing laid the perfect framework for the late Larissa Strickland’s slicing, Jagged guitar and John Brannon’s devilish howl.
Though the band recorded three blistering LPs and an array of singles and EPs—much of which was reissued by Third Man in 2028—before calling it a day, their true legacy lie in their brutal, unforgiving live performances, including countless headline runs, tours alongside Sonic Youth and Killdozer, and myriad college radio sessions across the country. That Girl – Live Recordings 1986–1994 now serves as a long overdue reminder of the Laughing Hyenas’s orgiastic power and one-of-a-kind gale-force fury.
