Perfect Pussy - Say Yes to Love

Perfect Pussy

Say Yes to Love
18 March 2014
Captured Tracks

4 stars out of 5

 

Syracuse punksters Perfect Pussy’s first LP, Say Yes to Love, stays true to the punk tradition in that you can listen to it three times in a hour. (Well, almost three times, anyway.) Packed into the album’s eight songs is enough energy to explain why 7 WTC fell when it was nowhere near Ground Zero. This record basically explodes out of the speakers. Singer Meredith Graves frantically delivers the goods without seeming to take a breath during the entire thing. Loaded with liberal doses of feedback, static, and hum, Say Yes to Love sounds about as analogue as it gets.

Though at its essence this is a hardcore punk record, touching on post-hardcore here and there, and infused with a healthy dose of noise rock, it has the feel of being an art record, an abstract impression of punk. To be found between the two-minute bursts of punk energy are ambient swirls and doodles, as well as minimalist exercises in static, more “One Minute of Silence” than Minutemen. “Interference Fits” progresses like one of Kim Gordon’s song-poems, while “VII” is an abstract and beatless industrial piece built upon distorted keyboard noises and Graves’s spoken word meanderings.

It’s refreshing to encounter such experimental enthusiasm in a hardcore band. As a statement of intent, it’s very impressive. It will be interesting to see what Perfect Pussy can show us with a longer set.

reviewed by Richard Krueger