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Review: Perfect Pussy ‘Say Yes To Love’

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Say Yes To Love is an album about noise. Perfect Pussy lean on distortion and feedback as much as any noise band has in recent memory. Meredith Graves’s vocals are obscured to the point where it’s hard to ever understand what she is saying. But facts like these have never stopped the world from loving similar albums before. With Say Yes To Love, when you’ve created an album that is so short, you can’t afford to waste any of that time on ambiance or white noise. Say Yes To Love showcases Perfect Pussy’s promise, but its one misstep holds it back from being a stronger first (official) release.

The best noise bands use noise as another instrument. Perfect Pussy largely keep their sound simple on Say Yes To Love. The guitar riffs are bawdy and bruising, the drums fast and the bass overwhelming at times (see the beginning of “Work” for a good example). The band works very strongly together, and there is a tightness to each time shift. Again, many of these things are simple, but when drummer Joshua Smith pushes the time signature into something new, the band follows without hesitation. You will quickly notice that feedback plays a part in all this as well. Though it’s much tougher to predict compared to the rest of the band, you have to assume when it is utilized in such a fashion that there is some purpose to it. It’s part of the band’s repertoire, and it’s better to be a band that utilizes the noise they create than just being loud for the sake of it.

Graves’s vocals are also a key cog in what makes the band run so well. She screams through feedback to the point where it’s hard to understand what she is saying, which takes away from the band’s ability to communicate, but the aggression that encompasses the band gives off a strong enough vibe on its own. There is a lot of feminine power contained both in the band’s name and Graves’s style. This works in her favor as a singer, setting the tone of what we expect from her. The only drawback in this arena is that their lyrics aren’t freely available as of the writing of this review. It would be nice to at least read them to get a better feel for the album’s themes.

Some strong points in the album include “Big Stars,” which has a wonderful keyboard part that weirdly fits in well under the clamor. This shows up in “Work” as well. “Interference Fits” is the standout on the album. It feels delicate compared to the rest of the album, and has pop elements to it that give the band another element to work with. It would have been nice to see them mix in more songs with this attitude, but it works as a metaphorical diamond in the rough.

In fact, about 16 of the album’s 23 minutes are pure, fast paced noise rock that is some of the best done in recent memory. The problem that drags Say Yes To Love down is that other seven minutes. There is an interlude at the end of “Advance Upon The Real” that continues into “VII” that eats up far too much time on the album. If it had been even 30 minutes long, there could have been room for experimentation, but when you are cutting an album’s length to 16 minutes, that hinders the listener’s ability to get a true feeling for the band’s sound and message. The rest of the album is so excellent that losing this time to white noise feels as if the listener is being cheated.

Say Yes To Love is flawed, but that doesn’t stop it from giving us a glimpse into the promise that the band has already shown. It’s in essence a quick hitting 17 minute long album. The actual songs on the album are tight, loud, and have an aggressive feminine feel to them. It’s a side of noise rock that could certainly use some expansion. If you take these songs and ignore the wasted time, then the album is a success. But taken as a whole, it feels like a wasted opportunity. The unused space could have been part of a larger concept that may have played bet out better if the album was longer, but because it is so short, it just ends up taking away from the whole product. It does hopefully express room for growth in their sound in the future. Experimentation in the right situation is never bad, but it just so happens that this situation was the wrong one to try something without more substance. Despite this, Say Yes To Love offers unbound hope for the future of Perfect Pussy. All the listener can ask for in the end is that Perfect Pussy allows themselves some more room on subsequent albums.

Review by Justin Owlett. Follow him on Twitter @justowle.



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