Front girl for Perfect Pussy, Meredith Graves steps up to the mic in the video for their 2014 track ‘Driver’. A blue light behind silhouettes her face, a guitar plays sharp and fast power chords in the background. She licks her lips, we breathe with her, and she starts to sing. As she does so the whole band kicks in. Ray McAndrew on guitar, amp feedback adding to the punk musicality of the tune, Garrett Koloski drums out a fast and hard rhythm, Greg Ambler bass is solid and defined and Shaun Sutkus’ synths fill the wall of noise.
Everything is fast, everything is hard, everything comes from within. Meredith’s lyrics aren’t easy to hear as she screams out, her vocal track layered with megaphone effects, but once you’ve tuned into them (or found them on google) you’ll hear just how poignant they are. ‘Driver’, the aforementioned video, is the first track from the album ‘Say Yes to Love’. If you’re a romantic, then the title of this album is all the romance you’re going to get. Throughout the record, Meredith’s lyrical theme details the pain of living and loving. The lies that we believe and the emptiness found with true love. The physical pain of emotional suffering and the consuming sickness of vanity.
But don’t misunderstand the poetry, it’s actually quite positive. Throughout the album she invites us to peel away that which we know to be true, “Since when did we say yes to love?” she asks, calling us to see an alternative way of living and loving. In fact, she encourages us to connect with ourselves and promotes self-love. “I am sitting with my fear/I am reverent in its light/ I am starting where I am/I move forward on my own”. And reminds us at the end of both ‘Interference Fits’ and ‘Work’ that “Everything is gonna be fine”.
The music is as equally strong and powerful as Meredith’s lyrics and the energy is present throughout ‘Say Yes to Love’. A moment of mellowness can be found on the track ‘Interference Fits’, however, the band really challenges our preconceptions with the song ‘Advance upon the Real’. It could be said that this track is as ground-breaking and as similarly surreal as John Cage’s 4 minutes and 30 seconds of silence. At over 9 minutes, it the longest track on the album, and, at first, it appears to conform to the rest of the album’s style. From 1:30 into the track, things change. Stay with it. Don’t pause or skip, go with the flow. Let them challenge you. Let them break your preconceptions.
Perfect Pussy started out in 2012 in Syracuse, New York and are signed to ‘Captured Tracks’. Their music can be found on bandcamp. They are an amazing punk band that push the boundaries of genre definitions and musical restraints. “Say Yes to Love” is their only studio album but it is eight tracks of female screaming punk hardcore heaven.
This article was first published in GrrrlswithGuitars
© Stephanie Arteaga, 2018