In a time when Texas lawmakers find House Bill 643 necessary and 2023’s version of church ladies are up in arms about drag queens reading Mother Goose stories to their children, Transy Warhol is the band this world deserves.
Imagine if the New York Dolls didn’t just borrow their girlfriends’ clothes and makeup bags. What if they had actually gone the route of Jayne County?
What began as a way to survive pandemic boredom grew into the most striking and unique of local punk bands, capable of both rocking harder than a mechanical bull run amok and subverting a few ideas. Now comes their 11-song debut album Control, dropped April 28. Although they seemingly arrived on the Austin scene fully formed in 2021, singer/leader Ruby del Mar laughingly assures that Transy Warhol’s transformation was anything but seamless.
“This was right after a messy breakup I went through right at the height of COVID, and I was quarantined with this person, so there was really nothing I could do,” she says. “I got them out of my life, and I really wanted to do something for myself.
“It really began with me reaching out to musicians in Austin, in general. But I found them to be at least vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of me being trans or just being a woman, in general. It kinda spurred in me this idea of wanting to work with all trans woman musicians, just for comfortability all around, and because there’s a certain understanding and solidarity [with] what I am trying to communicate. There’s no questions to be asked.”
Former members Simone Thomas (rhythm guitar) and Calliope Davishines (drums) were the first to heed Del Mar’s call, before current guitarist Adri Hullet and bassist Louise Montalvo jumped aboard. Transy Warhol Mach 1 lasted a while, until reconfiguring late last year. Found through Instagram, new drummer Belle Whiteley started out as a temporary stand-in for a couple of shows and ended up permanent, to everyone’s satisfaction.
They all found each other via the internet, out of necessity. “It wasn’t like I could go out and meet people then,” says Del Mar. “Honestly, we’re lucky it worked out the way it did. It’s kinda like answering one of those Craigslist ads,” she laughs.
Following their lockdown genesis, what was a fun garage/Dolls/Cramps mash-up last year in their beautifully chaotic live shows evolved into something less basic on Control. Strains of art-punk and Sonic Youth-inspired noise now crash through.
“It kinda spurred in me this idea of wanting to work with all trans woman musicians … because there’s a certain understanding and solidarity [with] what I am trying to communicate. There’s no questions to be asked.” – Ruby del Mar
“It came in over time,” agrees Hullet. “With these recordings, we were able to mess around with stuff more. I had some time at the end to play with the guitars and try to get them as noisy as possible, so there’s a lot of guitar overdubs on the album. ‘Maintain’ is probably the noisiest. That one was fun to do, because there’s just layers of guitar tracks doing slightly different stuff, trying to get it beefy.”
Bandleader Del Mar feels the display of different elements on Control is due to recording circumstances.
“We only had four days to do it, No. 1,” she says. “And No. 2, we had only dropped our old drummer and rhythm guitarist the month before. So a lot of it was us thinking on the fly, playing to our strengths. When we were all in the studio together, it was all of us bringing our different influences into it. I really like how it turned out.”
Hullet enjoys the headroom she’s now afforded as the band’s sole guitarist. “Louise takes up a lot of room with her bass parts, because she goes all over the neck. Before when there was another guitarist, there wasn’t a lot of room to fit them in. Now that she’s got her thing going and I can play around that, it feels really good to me.”
On four strings, Montalvo is also savoring her bigger presence in the sonic picture: “Before when there were two guitarists in the band, no one would come up and talk to me after a set!” Now she gets occasional affirmations about her bass playing, which she says is “great to hear.”
“Boy Toy,” written by Montalvo, musically resembles Adam & the Ants’ early, yodeling, fetish-punk anthem, “Beat My Guest.” Whiteley laughs that her father noted the resemblance as well. Montalvo’s lyrics offer a raw, unabashed blast of pure lust: “Boy pussy/ Wow, so gushy!” Later, Del Mar and Hullet’s “Kaleidoscope” is a distant cousin to Lou Reed’s immortal gay sex anthem, “Satellite of Love.”
“All of Lou Reed’s songs are gay sex anthems!” guffaws Del Mar. “Sometimes, you just have one song to sell …”
Songs are mostly a collective chore, with the singer adding: “For instance, if I’ve written a lyric, I’m not very well-versed with an instrument. So it involves me taking it to Louise or Adri, ‘Hey, here’s three ideas for songs. Here’s the lyrics. If you come up with something, let me know.'”
Control‘s material primarily deals with queer issues, identity, love connections, and trying to carve a space for Transy Warhol to be themselves in a largely homophobic/transphobic state. But “Fade,” stemming from Montalvo’s pen, delves into struggles with bipolar disorder. “I don’t know what I’m doing/ But at least I’m doing something real,” the band chants over a pummeling descending chord progression.
The album being largely self-produced, Del Mar appreciates that engineer Roky Moon, of local glam band BOLT!, “gave us the space to figure everything out.”
“He was very engineering-forward: ‘I’m just gonna go with whatever you wanna do.’ I think we found something we wouldn’t have found if we had someone driving the car for us.”
For now, we get to experience it digitally. A cassette edition is in the works, but will take awhile – Transy Warhol is running the tapes off themselves, in true DIY fashion!
* Editor’s note Thursday, May 11, 11:35am: A previous version of this story mentioned a Transy Warhol show tonight, May 11, at the Ballroom. The band has been replaced with Marry Cherry as openers for San Diego noise-pop duo Crocodiles.
Thursday, May 11, 2:10pm: Following publication of this story, Ruby del Mar confirmed to the Chronicle that Transy Warhol has broken up. Members Hullet, Whiteley, and Montalvo announced on Instagram they plan to separately launch a new project called the Get Lows.
This article appears in May 12 • 2023.
