Pussy Gillette: (l-r) Brent Prager, Masani Negloria, and Nathan Calhoun (Photo by John Anderson)
Masani Negloria tightens her cape. Nathan Calhoun lights a cigarette.
“You suckas bigger ascendancy your breath, ‘Cause we’re Pussy Gillette, and this gun’s for hire!”
With a abrupt snare, Austin’s best-named bandage comes to life.
A leather-clad Negloria – or Blackula, as she’s accepted tonight – fingerpicks a down-covered bass bandage and Calhoun, in a skeleton suit, scratches out ability chords abutting to her. Drummer Brent Prager, in a assistant suit, food the concussive beat.
It’s Halloween and Swedish rockers the Hives are about to abutting out the final night of the Levitation festival. Afore the Aughts barn sensations can adroitness the Mohawk stage, Austin punks Pussy Gillette are actuality to prime the crowd.
Calhoun keeps it air-conditioned – shades on, aperture pursed to accumulate his cigarette steady. Prager pounds away, bangs in his face. Negloria, however, chats up the admirers afterwards every song, a blowing in her articulation affiliated to that of a rockstar absorbing a stadium. Little does the club army know, this is her aboriginal project.
“I didn’t apperceive I could do any of this until I absolutely did it,” the singer, 36, says over coffee at Cherrywood, weeks afore the gig. “I aloof had a bass that I would affectionate of beam at, but I didn’t absolutely stick to it.”
One day, on a whim, her longtime acquaintance Calhoun – a adept of Austin’s underground whose accomplished projects accommodate Chaindrive and Gibby Haynes & His Botheration and currently plays bass in abundant attitude melters We Are the Asteroid – arrive her to jam. The duo wrote their aboriginal song that night.
“I Don’t Wanna Be Right,” the artefact of that spur-of-the-moment autograph session, appears on Pussy Gillette’s eponymous admission album, out November 19. At beneath than 90 seconds, the amelodic clue albatross stomps out the LP, Negloria’s yelps acute through Calhoun’s guitar howl. “I got bigger things to do than sit and lie in bed with you,” the bassist sneers.
The band’s amount brace still accent carelessness aback it comes to autograph and recording. They put their sprawling, 19-song LP to bandage over aloof three canicule aftermost March.
“I’ve been in projects area we activity over things for a absolutely continued time and I don’t apperceive if they anytime appear out any bigger than they do aloof authoritative it up absolutely quick,” Calhoun affidavit over a cigarette.
Originally from Pennsylvania, the guitarist began arena in bands as a jailbait and confused to Austin in 1990 – fatigued by the affiance of bargain rent. He met Prager, who additionally plays bass in aberrant jailbait academy Fuckemos, aback then, aback Prager was boot for babble legends Cherubs the aboriginal time around. In accurate jailbait bedrock fashion, Calhoun recorded the Pussy Gillette anthology himself, to a four-track cassette.
Dominated by mid-tempo barn burners, Pussy Gillette specializes in mostly fun, hardly awful barn rock, the affectionate that bursts in and out in beneath three minutes. Opener “2 to 10” is all distortion, while the bawl riff in “Surf City” drives home the track’s bank theme.
Latest awkward distinct “Banana” sums up the band’s amusement well: “I got a botheration with you burglary my banana/ And aback I acquisition you I will appearance you the hammer,” Negloria threatens. Surely there’s a bifold entendre in there somewhere. Anon enough, however, you admiration if the applesauce is literal: “I got a brittle bill blanket at home/ Aloof let me eat my assistant alone.” In the music video, Calhoun and Prager don assistant apparel while Negloria meanmugs in a amethyst bikini, wielding a sledgehammer. A blaze rages abaft them. In befitting with the trio’s analog aesthetic, they attempt the beheld on VHS.
Jokes aside, Pussy Gillette can additionally veer political. “Mala Noche,” which Negloria sings in Spanish, “is aloof about, you know,” the accompanist pauses, allotment her words carefully. “It’s a little darker of a song. I assumption it denounces Christ.”
“Wow,” Calhoun says, laughing. “I aloof anticipation it articulate cool.”
The glottal clue comes additional alone to “Walking Crime” in agreement of bite. Area one decries adorable bodies, the closing rejects civil authority. A accusation of badge overreach, the singer’s description of dehumanization cuts through the sonic grime. “They’ll acquisition a way to accomplish you feel you’re bigger off dead,” she spits over a back-and-forth riff. As the bass rumbles, it all hinges on one line: “You see me as a walking crime, but you’re aloof a pig to me!”
“You see me as a walking crime, but you’re aloof a pig to me!” Pussy Gillette’s bassist/vocalist Masani Negloria sings on the clue “Walking Crime.”
Pussy Gillette appear “Walking Crime” as a distinct in May 2020 in the deathwatch of George Floyd’s annihilation by Minneapolis badge administrator Derek Chauvin, but Calhoun and Negloria accent that the song – aggressive by the bassist’s own acquaintance with accident a acquaintance to badge abandon – had been accounting afore the summer’s billow in protests.
“I’ve accomplished racism my absolute life,” Negloria says. “So the actuality that it’s so new to some people, or some bodies are assuredly aperture their eyes about it, is an absorbing thing.”
It’s bright Negloria would rather let her lyrics allege for themselves than dive abysmal into her thoughts and adventures with racism. She states the accessible – things charge to change – but her aerial address conveys an burnout apparent to all Black people.
Calhoun sits agilely as his bandmate discusses the song and its context. But as the chat broadens, and we altercate assortment in the bounded music scene, he offers his own perspective.
The guitarist thinks aback to the Austin he aboriginal encountered in the Nineties, anon afterwards the Dicks and the Big Boys – “bands fronted by gay men and communists,” he underlines – fabricated their names.
“There was a able lesbian scene, bodies of blush were consistently in bands,” Calhoun says. “That’s consistently been a authentication of Austin. Alloyed race, alloyed sexes, alloyed animal preferences. They’re absolutely accustomed here. And I anticipate a lot of that was absent maybe in the aftermost 20 years.”
Suddenly acutely acquainted of his monologue, Calhoun pauses. “Did I arrest and booty over with my advantaged speak?” he asks. “Sorry.”
Despite his assiduous apologies, Negloria artlessly laughs. Conceivably she’s acclimated to Calhoun’s speeches – conceivably she aloof didn’t accept annihilation abroad to say.
This is Pussy Gillette’s amount activating summarized: while the two appear from starkly altered backgrounds, musically and otherwise, they display a bound bandage and a bright compassionate of anniversary other. Negloria is succinct, Calhoun speaks in paragraphs. Calhoun cracks jokes, and Negloria action heartily.
This bond intelligence informs the duo’s writing. Calhoun describes Negloria as the band’s active song force, whose basslines serve as the artistic axle of their songs, and himself as PG’s captious building curator, who offers effective criticism forth the way.
“And we don’t get mad at anniversary other, which is appealing good,” he says happily.
Despite their differences – “Masani brand PROG,” Calhoun exclaims – they’ve been able to abstain bandage drama, which the music adept sighs is a “whole ‘nother job.”
With their aboriginal LP in the can, what’s abutting for Pussy Gillette? Tour?
“I was cerebration about autograph this affair about a deaf, dumb, and dark kid that plays pinball,” Calhoun offers.
Negloria cackles. “You could do a accomplished cine about that.”
At atomic they accept a plan.
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