Perfect Pussy
Say Yes to Love (Captured Tracks)From the moment the needle drops on “Drive,” Perfect Pussy’s noise-punk masochism hits with the savage fury of a nail bomb going off in a junkyard. Yet deep beneath the wiry guitar feedback, gravel-kicking drum lurch, and cockpit voice recorder fidelity, vocalist Meredith Graves manages to project raw human emotion to the surface even when you can barely make out a word she says. Graves’ high-end yowl taps elemental, gut-level discontentment, rendering neo-cortical frills like language nearly inconsequential. And to think she once sang opera! Meanwhile, Ray McAndrew’s deconstructed guitar splay breathes subliminal melodic fire into tunes like “Big Stars.” The Syracuse quintet hits its stylistic apex with “Interference Fits,” which neatly congeals cacophony into an angry ball of counter-intuitive sonic love. Say Yes to Love gets bogged down in some questionably drawn-out experimentation toward the end, but that can’t undo the face-peeling impact of its first 15 minutes. (11:20pm, Red 7 Patio)
This article appears in March 14 • 2014.
