Perfect Pussy
Say Yes To Love
Captured Tracks – March 18th 2014
By Joshua Khan (@blaremag)
Find it at: iTunes | Insound | Official Store
8.5
Between their individual resumes and the permanent wreckage they leave at local spaces, Syracuse’s Perfect Pussy are punctuating their cassette tape intro. Their debut album, Say Yes To Love, adds footnotes to their serrated yet muffled sonics but if you’re still annoyed by the lack of clarity or audible noise, then you’re skimming through their work. Underneath the LP’s VSS-like punk blitzkriegs is singer Meredith Graves, who after being suffocated by the joys of a non-destructive romance, is pining on flaws and realizations while ripping the old floorboards beneath her. As soon as “Driver” tumbles in, she viciously yells “fear not the big drag” like a rabid teenage activist before slipping into her angst-laced poetry that always finds a casual way to connect (“Buddy, I’ll tell you, it never gets better”).
It’s Graves’ remarks that make Perfect Pussy’s authenticity so potent. Throughout Say Yes To Love, she see-saws between poetic voiceovers and wounded outbursts – emphasizing every single “fuck”, “shit”, and “love” while going on about constellations and “how a bulldozer studies an orchid”. The imagery she fleshes out on the LP is art but it’s nothing without the band’s tongue-cutting leads and enveloping drum work. “Bells” and “Big Stars” buzz with colour, “Dig” sprawls with grainy dream pop, and “Interference Fits” is a long pull on the sort of blissful disarray that leaves scar tissue on your eardrums. Because of Perfect Pussy’s tenacious approach to mid-tempo alt rock, you will relive your own “little black bruises” and feel naked in front of all that hovering feedback. It interferes but it’s soothing, and as Graves puts it herself: “We can speak the words of women and angels but without real love, it’s just sad noise”.
Listen: “Interference Fits”, “Work”, “Dig”, “Advance Upon The Real” || Check Out: “Driver”