Perfect Pussy wsg Green Crush
Shakespeare's Pub, Kalamazoo
May 9, 9 p.m.
$5; 21+
shakespearespub.com, (269) 488-7782
In April of 2013, a noise-punk group out of Syracuse, NY released a demo on cassette tape. The release boasted an in-your-face sound, which was heavy in both feedback and brutal honesty. These four Roman numeral-titled tracks, which begin by exploring the pain of knowing your best friend hooked up with your ex and end with the lyrics "F**k you," quickly demanded the attention of everyone within earshot.
And so began the music world's introduction to Perfect Pussy.
The band's name is admittedly provocative, and was specifically chosen to serve as singer Meredith Graves's proverbial flipping of the bird to societal expectations for perfection. As Graves explained it in an interview with Pitchfork, "Are you going to call me a c***? Are you going to tell me I'm ugly? Well, here's my band name-do your worst, motherf****r."
A Perfect Pussy song requires a certain level of commitment and effort to take in completely, especially with lyrics that are delivered via Graves yelling through a thick layer of heavy distortion.
"After the drums we do bass, then guitar. There's not a lot of natural distortion on those tracks; it's added after the fact, said Guitarist Ray McAndrew. Meredith runs the vocals through a distortion pedal, then through the amp with all the knobs turned up."
This deliberately loud approach carried through to the group's first full-length record, Say Yes to Love, which was released just this past March on Brooklyn-based record label Captured Tracks. And while some have have attempted to pigeonhole Perfect Pussy's noisy style as pretentious, most understand the purpose behind the growling delivery of the album's highly emotional sound. Even Rolling Stone calls it a "savagely awesome debut LP."
The band is now on tour in support of the new record, and is attempting to get accustomed to the the ups and downs of life on the road.
"Most of our drives have been six, seven, eight-hour drives," McAndrew said. "That's been the most frustrating thing on this tour, having nothing to do during that time. We'll stop at a comic book shop or meet up with some friends. .... We just played Chicago the other night, and the owner invited us to hang out after the show and he just kept handing us beers. We don't have craziness all the time, but sometimes we do."
