Perfect Pussy – Say Yes To Love
Say Yes To Love may only last 23 minutes but it’s taken a few months to fully absorb. Fronted by the explosive and magnetic Meredith Graves, Perfect Pussy are, in many ways, an anti-Captured Tracks band. It’s fair to say the iconic Brooklyn label has a signature sound and, simply, frenetic art-punk isn’t it. Yet, despite its antisocial assault, Say Yes To Love is built on melody. The breakneck “Driver”, for example, tumbles together the forlorn garage-punk of Japandroids with ear-filling scree and tape-deck production.
Like its predecessor – last year’s distinctly DIY I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling cassette – Say Yes To Love is nevertheless spectacularly messy and angry. The pummelling “Bells” scorches forth from the speakers on waves of pure feedback and the lo-fi thrash of “Work” screeches equally painfully, convulsing as if being tasered. They’re both thrilling takes, rare balances of ultraviolence and melody. It’s a mix that gives Say Yes To Love an inherent vulnerability to set against its screaming feminism. On one hand therefore you have that band name, the five-piece’s decision to swirl streaks of Graves’ menstrual blood into a limited run of the vinyl release and body-positive lyrics like “If I’m anything less than perfection/ Well, shit, nobody told me.” Then, on the flipside, you have Graves’ chronic tales of abuse (“You can read the story of my last six weeks/ In little black bruises and marks from boys’ teeth”) soundtracked by blunt-force riffs that rain down like fists.
She struggles to make herself heard at times too, part obliterated by abject noise which she wears like a veil. Her distorted voice is downright indecipherable during the opening bars of “Interference Fits”, a heavy-hearted bout of Sonic Youth experimentalism from which the album title comes and which switches it up to close out with a quadraphonic multi-tracking of that same vocal. The opening two minutes of “Advance Upon The Real” circle like caged fighters, taught drums winding up like comedy haymakers before a full three minutes of flickering real capture and ambient drone allow for a few moments of quiet reflection. Completing this unexpected trinity is “VII”, a Suicide-like no-waver that fizzes with synapse-swelling static, Graves again chattering away on the edge of sanity.
Say Yes To Love houses such curveballs comfortably, remaining relatable as it does and even going so far as to muse naively of the redemptive power of true love (“We can speak the words of women and angels/ But without real love, it’s just sad noise.”) For all its imagery and metaphor this is an album that ultimately presents a very human level of confusion when it comes to emotion and it makes for fascinating listening. On second thoughts, Say Yes To Love may just be the most essential Captured Tracks release yet.
Best tracks: “Driver” and “Interference Fits”
~Say Yes To Love is out now on Captured Tracks.~