by Fred Mills
8/9/2006

Front and center at a Runaways show back in the late '70s, I was gobsmacked by frontwoman Joan Jett's sheer, visceral rawk presence. Hell, I would've licked her toenails if she'd let me. As it was, I was happy just to get a guitar pick and a whole 'lotta 'tude. Sinner revives that feeling. The album's got rebel-yell anger ("Riddles," about pundits' and pols' verbal chicanery) and it's got lust (garagey "A.C.D.C." chronicles a switch-hitting femme fatale). It swings (tuneful waltz "Everyone Knows") and it thrashes (the Clash-like "Change the World"). One moment it's channeling Jett's '70s rock-glam roots (the anthemic "Turn It Around") and the next it's tapping a vintage Replacements tune (a swaggering, saucy "Androgynous") - just because the gal can. A quarter-century after that Runaways show, memories of solo Jett's iconoclastic "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" video from '82 also dancing in my head alongside these brash new tunes, I remain in awe. Chicks with guitars tend to do that to me, of course; but more to the point, even when Jett purrs, she roars. It's utterly inspiring. Some of us men do know, and the little
girls, of course, definitely understand.