Shea Stadium 12\/6\/13<\/strong><\/p>\nI went to see Perfect Pussy at Shea Stadium in Brooklyn last Friday. They were playing with a string of up and coming punk bands (Blessed State, Flagland, Yvette and California X).\u00a0 Their performance was penultimate.<\/p>\n
The first thing that my roommate said to me after entering the venue was, \u201cGeez, there are so many men here!\u201d This statement was very true. The male-to-female ratio was about ten-to-one.<\/p>\n
Perfect Pussy took the stage nonchalantly, chatting with the audience and one another as they set up their instruments. After a sound check where Graves had the sound engineer turn the mic way up, (my poor ears!) they paused, and over the impossibly loud reverb and guitar feedback, Graves addressed the audience. \u201cHey everyone, we\u2019re Perfect Pussy.\u201d There was another brief pause, and the music began.<\/p>\n
Then Meredith Graves opened her mouth, and the gender comment my roommate made no longer mattered. Screaming at the top of her lungs until she was red in the face and the veins were popping out of her neck, Graves wiped away all of my previous gender awareness in one fell swoop.<\/p>\n
A moshpit instantly formed (the only one of the night) while Graves writhed, pirouetted and hurled her body around haphazardly. Graves commanded power when she flexed her biceps and formed fists on the stage. She even got in one mosher\u2019s face while singing \u201cI.\u201d , pulling\u00a0 the stranger forward so that their faces were almost touching while shouting \u201cShe\u2019ll forget her actions. Someday I\u2019ll forget her actions. Ashes to ashes to ashes, we will all die someday.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nIn seemed like as soon as the set started, it had already finished. I had heard that they put on short shows but I didn\u2019t expect it to be quite so short (They played 3 songs that lasted less than 15 minutes). \u00a0I like to think that Graves and the gang put so much into their performance that they exhausted themselves after only a few songs. Also, the fact that they have only released 4 tracks makes a 45 minute set perhaps more of a challenge. Regardless, they played an incredible show, well worth the hearing loss that I likely incurred (my ears are still ringing!)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Femme Unfiltered: PERFECT PUSSY<\/strong><\/p>\nIn her music and performance, Meredith Graves presents an aggressive, unattainable and intimidating attitude. \u00a0Her lyrics are often aggressive or sexually explicit. \u201cThere’s no room in this world for people who hate men, fuck you \/\/ My best friend is back in town. There’s a bad taste in my mouth. Her eyes fell low and heavy with shame and cum.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nGraves\u2019 also displays a more vulnerable and insecure side of herself. \u00a0\u201cHow long will I have you? \/\/ \u00a0Who am I to speak of permanence? \/\/ \u00a0I\u2019ll be fifty in the book of names but goddamn it, I’ll be the last on the list \/\/ Someday I’ll stop begging you of who and how.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nShe represents a person who is both aggressive and intimidating yet also shy, vulnerable and flawed. Graves doesn\u2019t seem to care about whether or not she is supposed to be the shy, vulnerable Taylor Swift type or whether she is supposed to play the domineering Beyonce\/Lily Allen role. Those models are impossible extremes and, just like men, women are complicated beings. We are sexy, ugly, skinny, fat, mean, nice, shy, outgoing, slutty and prude, all in one person. Graves is brave and honest enough to expose the complexity and confusion of femininity. She displays her battles with aggression and insecurity in her lyrics. \u00a0\u201cFirst I was softer, then I was stronger, now I am frightened, would you look at me now?\u201d \/\/ \u00a0I’m a tough boy, wild and innocent and dangerous as hell.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nIn an interview with Pitchfork she mentioned that the band\u2019s name, Perfect Pussy is a response to her own insecurity about her body image. \u201cPerfect Pussy\u201d is Grave\u2019s declaration that she no longer cares if she is ugly.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody can look at me and say shit about my appearance or my body, which is all too common for women in music. It’s like, \u2018Are you going to call me a cunt? Are you going to tell me I’m ugly? Well, here’s my band name, \u2018do your worst, motherfucker.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nThe contradiction posed in aggressive name of the band and her own feelings of insecurity indicate indicates that this complexity extends from her music to her life and back.<\/p>\n
Graves\u2019 combination of both femininity and masculinity in her writing and performing is seemingly genuine and effortless. Too often female musicians are pigeon-holed as certain \u201ctypes\u201d, yet Graves is able to successfully blend various colors of femininity into her music, thus promulgating power through honesty.<\/p>\n
*******<\/p>\n
Perfect Pussy has just finished playing a number of NYC events this past month and is now headed on a country-wide tour. Listen to I Have Lost All Desire for Feeling<\/em> here via bandcamp<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
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Twice a month, audiofemme profiles artists both emerging and established, who, in this industry, must rebel against misogynist cultural mores. Through their music\u00a0 they express the attendant hurdles and adversities (vis-a-vis the entertainment industry and beyond) propagated by those mores. For our first installment, Rebecca Kunin profiles Perfect Pussy, who burst onto the scene earlier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":48406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[573,1056,638],"tags":[952,973],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/logo-white-on-black-01.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5234"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5234"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19631,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5234\/revisions\/19631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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