Sad Girl For Life

September 17, 2003

A recurring theme in my life is that I am always a bit late to the party with music. I’m ahead of the curve compared to my grandma, but competing with lifeless 19 year olds with giant pipes of bandwidth in their dorm room is a tough business. I snagged a copy of Pretty Girls Make Graves‘ Good Health a year ago, based mostly on recommendations that mentioned a similarity to my beloved Sleater-Kinney. Well, turns out I didn’t like Good Health much, at first. A few songs jumped out at me, but I found myself throwing it on the pile after a few listens. Admittedly, I have the attention span a goldfish.

Offhandedly dismissing Good Health like that made me miss the PGMG train completely. It wasn’t until hearing PGMG’s new release, The New Romance, that I had an opportunity to hop aboard again. The new record finds the band dialing down the speed and screaming a notch, and letting the melodies and hooks surface. The songs breathe more and have a stronger sense of dynamics, and ultimately, I think it’s a stronger album. I eventually revisited Good Health and the Pretty Girls Make Graves EP and found myself mesmerized. I loved the interlocking guitars, the thunderous rhythm section, the passionate vocals and their highly developed arrangements and songwriting. I can’t quite pin down the sound, but there are hints of Fugazi and the Avengers. There just wasn’t a whole lot I didn’t like about it, other than realizing I was an idiot for passing on it earlier.

Armed with an almost stalkerish familiarity with their entire 25 song catalog, I was more than ready to see Pretty Girls Make Graves shake down the Echo in Echo Park, home of the original Sad Girls Por Vida. The Echo’s a tiny joint, and the show looked to be a sellout, or at least close to it. Despite being an all ages show, the crowd was mostly college aged pretty girls in 80′s clothes dragging along their waifish emo boyfriends. Thankfully, there were only three or four trucker hats in the crowd.

Pretty Girls Make Graves took the stage and crammed themselves on the tiny stage. Singer Andrea Zollo and drummer Nick DeWitt lined up dead center with guitarist/keyboardist Jason Clark on the right. With the narrow stage, bassist Derek Fudesco and guitarist Nathan Thelen staggered themselves on the left with one of them always in the lone back corner, depending on who was singing backing vocals.

The set started with “Something Bigger, Something Better,” the opening track from their new album. I found this to be an awkward set opener, as it starts a little slowly before really kicking into gear. The audience as a whole didn’t really know the song well enough to respond to it. It wasn’t until older material like “More Sweet Soul” and “Sad Girls Por Vida” that the crowd began to liven up. After that, PGMG were able to mix in some of the newer material more effectively, with “Teeth Collector” and “All Medicated Geniuses” matching the older material in intensity and fire. The crowd was fairly laid back until the looped keyboards of “Speakers Push the Air” started up, upon which all the kids in Dead Center exploded. Andrea Zollo may end up writing better lyrics than “Speakers Push the Air,” but it’ll be hard to pen a song that touches the hearts of indie music lovers more than that one. Zollo continues to try though, and the keyboard tinged “New Romance” and ever accelerating “This is Our Emergency” are both future anthems to be reckoned with.

I’d heard that PGMG were a terrific live act, but I was absolutely shocked at how tight they were. These guys could flat out play, rarely missing a note no matter how many time changes, stops and starts there were. It all starts with Nick DeWitt and Derek Fudesco in the rhythm section, who are able to generate a heavy groove no matter how wild DeWitt gets with his hands. I particularly like his cymbal work during “New Romance” and his tambourine and maraca percussion during “All Medicated Geniuses.” Fudesco’s bass work gets a bit drowned out when the band is going full bore, but he’s often left carrying the melody when the band goes off on weirder tangents, or when the guitars drop out completely, like on “Grandmother Wolf.” Nathan Thelen and Jason Clark’s guitars cover the entire spectrum, from chimey arpeggios from Thelen’s Rickenbacker and distorted crunch from Clark’s Gibson to Sonic Youth-esque sheets of noise from the both of them. The band were in such unison that they even danced similarly, nervous shakes of live wire energy with the occasional head toss that would flick mists of sweat into the air. Hell, they even all sing the same way, with gravelly screams from hoarse throats.

In the midst of all this madness is lead singer Andrea Zollo, another brilliant frontwoman in a time of brilliant frontwomen. With bangs that fall over her eyes, she looks a bit like a pre-shrunk Karen O, with even some of the same microphone poses and mannerisms. The main difference is that where O situates her persona as larger than life, Zollo strives to connect with her audience on a more human level. With heavy eye contact and audience interaction, she’s insistent on making the concert as much of a communal experience as possible. Personal material like “The Getaway” and “Sad Girls Por Vida” resonate with genuine honesty and “This is Our Emergency” is performed with a sincerity that makes it difficult not to answer her call to arms.

Pretty Girls Make Graves is a rare, special band, able to fuse fierce punk rock with a high level of musicianship and heartfelt truthfulness. Judging by their progress, they seem to be improving almost exponentially. It takes a fool like me to miss out on that completely. Don’t be like me.

Currently on tour, PGMG is going door-to-door and playing virtually every city in the U.S., making believers of everyone. It’ll be hard to miss them if you’re paying attention at all. If they’re not playing in your city… uh, move.

Sartorial Tangent: There were only small and medium sized t-shirts. No Ls or XLs. Fat dudes love you too, hook a brother up.

Soundtrack:
Liquid Courage – Pretty Girls Make Graves

Posted in From Blown Speakers