Culture

Rating: A

Clocking in at just under 23 minutes, Say Yes To Love is furious and relentless, so much so you almost try to inhale twice as slow to compensate. Buried in a constant layer of noise and feedback, its violence is tremendous. It’s visceral and it’s unmerciful, it’s loud and it’s obnoxious. Yet at the same time it’s spectacular, it’s joyous and it’s blissful. This music is sharp. It cuts and it keeps gnawing, and soon it starts to sting. Like the way a fresh wound stings, like the way your insides swell and wince right after your heart is sliced in two. That wondrous and simultaneously devastating euphoria.

Say Yes To Love is Perfect Pussy’s debut album and follows their self-released demo EP, I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling. Hailing from Syracuse, New York, the group have attracted quite a large following over the past few months, and deservedly so. Fronted by the mesmerising Meredith Graves, she is joined by Ray McAndrew on guitar, Garrett Koloski on bass, Greg Ambler on drums and Shaun Sutkus on keyboards. The band have become renowned for their live shows, which apparently involve the throwing of instruments off bridges. That energy and passion, amongst other things, is definitely apparent on this first offering.

Though riddled with distortion, McAndrew’s guitar lines are lustrous and melodic. Meredith’s vocals are often muffled and affected, whether with a slight delay, or a crunchy overdrive. They are brutal, pretty and viscious. At times they even border on catatonic, such as as on “VII” where they dive in and out in swirling madness. Tracks such as “Interference Fits” showcase a jagged fragility, interplaying slicing feedback with an undercurrent of melody. “Driver,” “Bells,” “Work” and “Advance Upon The Real” are propulsive, spiky punk songs, layered with beautiful glints of instrumentation. Each track flows seamlessly into one another, forming a cohesive experience, glistening yet contused around the edges.

Say Yes To Love is that moment you felt the world collapse around you, then you blinked and realised you were still breathing. You lie there, unashamedly revelling in a state of sheer catastrophic beauty, laughing atop a surface littered with broken glass. “I want to fuck myself!/I want to eat myself!” Meredith Graves screams, and for some reason it all makes sense.