Here’s what you have to know about Columbus, Ohio: it’s small. There’s a handful of bars everyone goes to, a handful of shows where you literally see everyone you know, and very few people stick around for more than a year or two after they graduate from CCAD or OSU (or any one of the zillions of other colleges that call Columbus home). But because there’s an influx of creative, youthful innovators, Columbus is on top of its shit, in a way. It’s got a thriving arts district, foodie scene, and there have always been great bands (especially those with a lo-fi bent) based out of the heart-shaped state’s capital.
Recently, there’s been buzz about All Dogs, Sex Tide, Nervosas* and Connections. That last band features members of Times New Viking, who was the band with the buzz in “my time” – specifically, 2001-2008, when I lived in that humble Midwestern City. The fuzz rockers released a handful of purposely ill-recorded LPs, becoming progenitors of so-called “shit-gaze” alongside Psychedelic Horseshit, another band I saw in Columbus dives too many times to count. For whatever reason, I found myself thinking about TNV’s first record, Dig Yourself, and was shocked to realize that almost a decade had passed since its release. But that glorious distortion takes me back like it was yesterday.
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]the classic Times New Viking set-up at Bourbon Street
The only local bands I saw more often than TNV were Sweetheart (the Unwound love-letter featuring Ahmed Gallab, aka Sinkane, on drums) and Sword Heaven (a terrifying noise/performance project fronted by the guy who holds the world’s record for most hours hula-hooped). And maybe Lambsbread by default since Lambsbread opened for damn near everybody. I went to art school with TNV’s co-vocalists, Adam Elliott and Beth Murphy, but only knew them tangentially, through friends of friends. A mutual acquaintance of mine and Murphy’s for instance, is the reason I’ll never do Adderall again. And Elliott served me too-large shots every Sunday at Bourbon Street’s karaoke (I will never again come across a catalogue that encyclopedic). Once, at a DJ event in that same bar, he gave me a dream catcher made by a bum. And we both attended this Blue Cheer show in some weird office space in Grandview; he was making out with his then-girlfriend in the closet most of the time. When they broke up she’d go on to say that he’d been physically abusive toward her, but she lied about hooking up with my roommate years later and dated a guy** I had two weeks after we broke up, not to mention having a penchant, in general, for my sloppy seconds. I used to call her my nemesis (as opposed to my archenemy) for that reason, but now she’s married so I stopped caring. Plus I lived with her cousin for three years after I moved to NYC, when any remaining grudge I harbored was long past ridiculous.
Girls like her, as well as rumors and the like, are one of the main reasons I moved away; Columbus’s smallness got to me after a while. I always said I’d never sleep with more than one dude in a single band, and then three dudes I had slept with formed a band afterward (not based on the fact that they’d all fucked me, but still). Listening to Dig Yourself after I had not in a while, though, was a welcome vacation through time and distance. In particular, “Dance Walhalla” caught me in a web of awkward memory. Most everyone I knew lived in this shitty part of town East of campus that we referred to as “Washington Beach” for some reason, or no real reason at all. Just to the North, you had Clintonville, where I think we all wanted to live (most of us eventually moved there). It was stereotypically crunchy – as in, home to the only co-op, populated by lesbians – but also really elegant in a certain fairy-tale sort of way. While most of Columbus is flat, Clintonville is woodsy and has houses built into hillsides, most dramatically along Walhalla Street. My friends and I liked to cruise around down there after dark, exploring train tracks and drain pipes and supposedly haunted houses because we had nothing better to do. It’s not just the name-checking a location in the song’s title, but the restlessness of it in the shouted vocals, the dissatisfied crash of drums, and that line “They couldn’t talk about nothing / So they spoke of too tall buildings”. It feels as aimless as living in that place felt to me then, but it also romanticizes such mundane uncertainty. I’m not even, and never have been, sure if those are the actual words to the song. Follow that with the nostalgic one-two punch of “Indian Winter”‘s lackadaisical lyrics: “We were married to…. not a goddamn thing” and you don’t have to have lived anywhere near there to know what the sticky, confusingly incestuous scene felt like.
TNV’s ability to translate the devil-may-care, jaded experiences of youth – I mean, they didn’t even try to make the recording sound good – is a big part of why people latched onto Dig Yourself and that band in general. They put the record out on Siltbreeze, which felt like sort of a big deal, and followed it up with Present the Paisley Reich on that same label before signing to Matador, which really felt like a big deal. Two summers ago, I saw them play live for the last time. A guy I’d just started dating (who wasn’t even from Ohio!) invited me to see them open for The Clean at (le)Poisson Rouge. It felt almost like a weird joke that he had asked, and it was even weirder when I bumped into old Columbus friends I hadn’t expected to see at the show because they still live there and I don’t anymore. I only know a handful of people that do, these days. But when listening to Dig Yourself, that history is never far behind me – whether it’s the memory of famed toothless savant Don B (a local fixture) belting out Batman with every band who ever played a show in Columbus, or reminiscing on something as simple as a pointless night drive down a darkened street.
* an ex-boyfriend of mine fronts this band, which is a lot better than the trying-too-hard psych outfit he was in when we dated
** that ex-boyfriend[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
It is a goddamn golden age for girl-fronted punk. It’s not that there haven’t been important works by women in the ensuing years, but 2013 saw a Riot Grrrl Renaissance unlike anything since its early ’90s inception. Back then, Kathleen Hanna had to make safe spaces at Bikini Kill shows for female attendees by calling out aggressive dudes. The ladies at the forefront of the movement had to blacklist the mainstream media that painted them alternately as fashion plates, dykes, or whores (sometimes all three, and always with negative connotations; it shouldn’t be implied that to be any of these things is bad or wrong in the first place). By all accounts, they “couldn’t play” anyway, so the medium and its messages were barely worth discussing as anything more than a passing trend. Meanwhile, riot grrrls preached their radical politics one Xerox at a time.
If the wisdom of these women seemed to skip the generation that adored Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” without criticism, it has finally come full circle in a way that feels vital and urgent now. Not only are we as a culture stepping up to finally examine sexism and exploitation and appropriation within the industry, there are more acts than ever completely unafraid to do their own thing – be it overtly political (see: Priests) or revolutionary in its emotional candidness (looking at you, Waxahatchee). Maybe it has to do with direct influences of stalwart ensembles like Sleater-Kinney and Bratmobile, and maybe it’s a thing that’s happened gradually as those first voices carved out room for other female performers (for instance, in establishing Rock Camps for young female musicians throughout the country, a project that initially came about through discussions and direct action in riot grrrl communities). There’s no way to make an inclusive list of all the phenomenal bands (punk or otherwise) now blazing their own trails through their various scenes but taking a tally of at least a few of these acts felt like a necessity for me as someone whose entire life was informed by music like this, and girls like them. And because fifteen years after I discovered it for myself, 2013 feels like one giant, celebratory dance party/victory lap.
CARRYING THE TORCH
If 2013 is the year female-fronted punk broke, it has to be said that not all 90’s era veterans burned out or faded politely away. In fact, two of the grunge scene’s most influential women put out intensely personal releases this year.
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]Hanna and Gordon in 1994’s “Bull in the Heather” video
Body/Head, Kim Gordon’s noise project with Bill Nace, created a moving exploration of feminine and masculine tropes in the form of a noise record. I wouldn’t want to reduce Coming Apart to a document of her split from long-time partner Thurston Moore, but the whole thing feels every bit as raw and awkward as a life change that catastrophic must have been. It’s Gordon’s most powerful, wild moments in Sonic Youth distilled down and then blown up. Her vocals can sound desperate and strained at times, but this is ironically the most forceful aspect of the recordings – the anger and the vulnerability existing together in all its anti-harmony.
[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]Kim Gordon and Bill Nace perform as Body/Head in June at St. Vitus
Likewise, Hanna’s record is not a chronicle of her late-stage Lyme Disease, the chronic illness that forced her to quit touring with socially-conscious electro outfit Le Tigre (for that, check out Sini Anderson’s brilliant Hanna doc The Punk Singer) but a testament to the triumph that creating it had over her sickness. Reviving her moniker from ’97’s bedroom-recording project Julie Ruin by adding a “The” to the front and four incredible musicians and co-conspirators at her back, the band released Run Fast in September. It manages to meld every one of Hanna’s prior sonic sensibilities, burnishing the the dance-punk of Feminist Sweepstakes with the sass and cacophony of The Singles and adopting the confessional tone of that first solo record.
This is riot grrrl all grown up; though neither project should necessarily bear that particular label, it feels like a continuation of the story that in turn validates its importance. And the influence of Gordon and Hanna and others of their ilk can certainly be heard in a whole host of bands with break-out records that landed this year. Again, it’s not that anyone in these bands are running around calling themselves riot grrrls, just that they’d be right at home on a playlist with bands who did (and bands of that era, from Red Aunts to Discount to that dog., that demanded my affection as equally).
NEXT WAVE
Katie and Allison Crutchfield have been making music since they were teenagers, most notably in P.S. Elliot before splitting up to pursue creative projects as separate entities. Katie released American Weekend in 2012 and Cerulean Salt in March, Allison released a self-titled record with her band Swearin’ last year and followed it up with Surfing Strange a few months ago. The girls are mirror twins, meaning they’re identical but that their features are reversed in some instances, and that’s a good approximation of how their musical projects merge and divide. Cerulean Salt is stripped down sonically and hyper-focused on thematic subject matter, dealing directly with her family history and its personal stories. Swearin’ takes a music-making approach more classic to pop punk, its subject matter just as earnest but with a broader focus. The two have reunited for one-off projects (like an incredible cover of Grimes’ Oblivion for Rookie Mag) and live together in Philly with their boyfriends (both of whom play in Swearin’). In interviews and in their song lyrics they espouse feminist ideas unabashedly and have talked openly about finding inspiration in the riot grrrl movement.
Speaking of Alison’s boyfriend, Kyle Gilbride produced girl-punk supergroup Upset’s debut album, She’s Gone, out this year on Don Giovanni. Uniting Vivian Girls contemporaries Ali Koehler and Jenn Prince with Patty Schemel of Hole, She’s Gone is a quirky collection of catchy, rapid-fire jams that at first listen might come off as slightly superficial. But at the crux of the record is the idea of examining female experience, in particular the formative teenage years, in which break-ups and female rivalry loom large. Taking what might be written off as juvenile and giving it its due importance in song is what makes the album both accessible and relevant. If it seems precocious to compare one’s dreams to a dinosaur, at least it validates them by re-calibrating the scale.
Don Giovanni put out another astounding release in The Worriers’ Cruel Optimist. Fronted by Lauren Denitzio of Measure, the project seeks to combine her interests in literature, art, and queer activism in a way her past musical projects have not. Over hooky guitars and crashing drums, Denitzio talks about privilege in feminism and the need to re-evaluate personal politics with growing older on “Never Were”, references Jeanette Winterson as a way to talk about androgyny and gender identity on “Passion”, and ruminates on the toll that conservative politics took on a personal relationship in “Killjoy”. The album closes with “Why We Try”, a triumphant reminder of the reasons these discussions still need to happen in music and elsewhere. “If we expect something better / things won’t just move forward / Remember why we try“.
In talking about New Brunswick’s esteemed DIY circuit, we’d be remiss to not include Marissa Paternoster, active for several years now in the punk scene there, releasing work under solo moniker Noun as well as with her band Screaming Females. It’s the latter’s most recent release, Chalk Tape, that sees the band going in some very interesting melodic directions with their particularly searing brand of guitar rock, recording most of the songs without revisions based around concepts scrawled on a chalkboard. Paternoster’s commanding vocals, gliding easily between out-and-out aggressive and tender, looped sophistication, paired with her exceptional guitar work, make Chalk Tape a tour de force. Here’s hoping a few misguided Miley fans accidentally stumbled on the wrong “Wrecking Ball”.
Nestled in another well-respected DIY scene, Northampton-based Speedy Ortiz represent a collective of 90’s-era rock enthusiasts with a poet at the helm. Sadie Dupuis feels more comfortable behind a guitar than on open-mike night, but the lyrics she penned for Major Arcana and delivers with brass are practically worthy of a Pulitzer. Razor sharp wit, slyly self-deprecating quips, and vitriol marked by vulnerability characterize the general tone of the record, its particular lyrical references so nuanced and clever it begs about a million listens.
Potty Mouth sprang out of the same scene when Ally Einbinder, frustrated with the difficulties of booking shows and playing in bands with men who rarely asked her input when it came to songwriting, decided to form and all-female punk band. Einbinder and her cohorts are frequent participants in Ladyfest, which has sought to showcase feminist artists across different mediums for thirteen years running. Bursting with energy and attitude, Potty Mouth’s debut Hell Bent calls bullshit on punk scene bravado, questions obsessive tendencies, encourages punk girls in small towns “it-gets-better” style, and delivers acute, sharp-tongued kiss-offs to any doubters.
Though the pun alludes to classically trained harpist and witchy-voiced weird-folk patron saint Joanna Newsom, Alanna McArdle and her compatriots in Joanna Gruesome stray pretty far from that reference point. Instead, the UK band cherry-picks from shoegaze, twee, and thunderous punk with Adderal-fueled ferocity. McArdle is a study in contradictions, one moment singing in a sweet-voiced whisper and the next shouting psychotically, often about crushing skulls or some other, equally violent way of expressing her twisted affections. The group met in anger management, and every second on Weird Sister sees them working out some deeply seated issues, the end result proving what a gift anger can be.
NEXT YEAR
This particular calendar year, it seems, is only the beginning. With a record crate’s worth of amazing releases from 2013, there’s a bevvy of bands with bandcamp profiles, demos, EPs, cassettes and singles that hold a lot of promise for future releases. Across the board, when asked how their bands formed or when they started playing, the response is “I wanted to do it so I got a guitar and I just started playing.” The DIY ethos and “fuck it” attitude are what make these projects so vital and exciting.
Priests
The DC group are explosive live, in particular thanks to Katie Greer’s spastic growl and Daniele Withonel’s revelatory drumming. The band’s been known to spout off about anti-consumerism between songs, out of breath from the high-energy set, but there’s plenty of radical content in their self-released tapes, too. Those searching for manifestos need look no further than “USA (Incantations)”, a spoken-word bruiser that skewers the non-inclusive founding of America and ends with “this country was not made for you and it was built on lies and murder”; it kind of makes me want to vote for Priests for president. Elsewhere on Tape 2, Withonel steps from behind her drum kit to flip the script on the male gaze, with perfect Kathleen Hanna pitch. Whether they’re singing about Lana del Ray or Lillian Hellman, these self-described Marxists provide an electrifying listen.
Perfect Pussy plays notoriously brief shows – if you blink during their set, you’ll miss ’em – but all have played the Syracuse scene for years now. The quartet got a lot of attention this over I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling, a four song EP with walls of guitar fuzz and synths and some forceful vocals from Meredith Graves buried low in the mix. Trained in opera but trying out punk, she’s said that because she’s insecure about her singing they’ll likely stay that way when the band records a full length. But it’s not because she’s trying to hide her words – you can read them by clicking through each song on Perfect Pussy’s bandcamp. They are well worth extracting from the sludge, coming across like a Jenny Holzer send-up of rape culture, mixed in with some personal meditations on growing past a female betrayal and catharsis through relationships thrown in for good measure.
Ellen Kempner writes off-kilter lyrics that perfectly distill the wonder and worry that comes with being a teenager, but with a wise, almost nostalgic tone that does not belie the fact that she is, actually, a freshman in college, living these experiences for the first time. Her musician father taught her how to play guitar, and in high school she was in a band called Cheerleader before releasing some solo recordings that morphed into Palehound. Their excellent Bent Nail EP came together this year, featuring the quintessential “Pet Carrot”, which seesaws from sing-songy folk to scuzzy 90’s grunge more reminiscent of Liz Phair than of Lorde.
The Philly trio are a perfect picture of female solidarity, repping other girl bands from Philly in interviews and inking their bodies with matching arrow tattoos, as well as getting involved with Philly’s Ladyfest. They sing about friendships and loss and the city around them with a raspy roar, holding back just enough on their three-song demo to hint at the spaces they’ll grow into.
Coming out of Columbus, Ohio’s great lo-fi scene (which bands like Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit helped build, and contemporaries Sex Tide and Connections will only continue), All Dogs take that same energy and clean up the grime just a bit to let Maryn Bartley’s hopelessly catchy vocal melodies shine. There’s a youthful exuberance and earnestness that propels the material on their split cassette with Slouch and their self-titled 7″ released on Salinas Records. The Crutchfield sisters have been big early supporters; Katie booked them as openers on an upcoming Waxahatchee tour after saying they “made her cry”.
About an hour south in Cincinatti, Bridget Battle takes an endearing 60’s girl group intonation and spits it snottily into a microphone while her bandmates in TWEENS play messy, immediate punk rock. Their CMJ performances earned them rave reviews and helped them release a bit of the energy they’d pent up during the recording of their first full-length in DUMBO, set to see release sometime this spring. Until then, they’ll be touring with fellow Ohioans the Deal sisters for The Breeders’ extended reunion shows.
“I don’t care what you think as long as I can’t hear it / I’ll be a fly some other place. / I don’t care what you do / As long as you stay away from me / I can’t stand the way you do the things you do.” So begins “All the Girls” from Heavy Bangs’ bandcamp demos. It’s a departure from the quirky indie pop Cynthia Schemmer played as guitarist for Radiator Hospital, but it takes cues from the same attention to clever melody. The best indication of what might come from her solo project are the artful and contemplative postcards she posts to her tumblr (http://cynthiaschemmer.tumblr.com/) before sending them to to friends, apologetically explaining why Philly drew her back after time in New York, or recounting conversations she had with a therapist over the loss of illusions. Like the two tracks she’s shared, these can feel sad but are intently self-aware, the attention to detail speaking volumes between the lines.
Are those alive in a golden age ever able to really realize it? Or can it only be understood by looking back? With the passage of time we grow older and wiser and we’re better able to put things into context, but there are some moments that are simply meant to be lived. If you’re not screaming at the top of your lungs to these records or dancing in the front row at one of these shows, you’re doing it wrong.
