One of my favorite but neglected genres of modern rock music is the post-punk revival sort of cacophony. It grabbed my ears maybe a year after high school, which was probably too late to cash in on the scene. By the time I found Pretty Girls Make Graves in 2009, the band was shelved for two years. That doesn't mean I can't be a dreamer.
One of the reticent issues I have with getting into real "punk rock" is that it doesn't always sound very interesting. Usually I find the production a bit furry where it should be clean-shaven. Sometimes I hear a song and think "that was great! -- for thirty seconds". In other words, punk rock has no payoff.
As a music enthusiast, I want crescendo. Better than thirty second crescendos in a song here or there, I want the album to experience a crescendo. When an album has crescendo and masters the musician's impulses with the "not yet... not yet" ethos of the world's greatest epic stories, it captivates me. Pretty Girls Make Graves have made two such enrapturing albums: The New Romance and Elan Vital.
So some time around graduating high school, I had discovered the love of mathcore welling up inside me. Reaching through the Zune marketplace (Yeah I had one of those things and there hasn't been a PMP like it since), I found every bit of music I could find, using Wikipedia as my brainstorming tool of choice. Converge (on the recommendation of high school friend Justin) led me to Botch.
From Botch I was taken toward Minus The Bear and These Arms Are Snakes. From These Arms Are Snakes I was wisted toward Sharks Keep Moving and Kill Sadie. From these bands, I was presented with Pretty Girls Make Graves. Not quite the heritage of Botch and their brand of destructive atonality, but intriguing nonetheless.
PGMG have all the markings of "underrated indie" that I look for. They aren't really "emo", because the music is interested more in art than emotion. They aren't really "punk", because belying the somewhat-aggressive lyrics are the smart cheek-kisses of careful production values. The vocals don't have the razor-sharp overdubbing quality of pop-punk, and neither do they sound like a lawn mower trying to chew up your grandfather's old yard tree stump. Guitars sound crisp, but without the corn-sugar empty spaces taken up by resonance.
So surprising it is, then, that both the radio-friendly Romance and the brooding Elan Vital are such equitable examples of how to do "post-" music without letting the arbitrary experimentation cause creativity overdose.
What makes the music good is that the guitars never seem to follow a formula. Drums don't detract but enhance the identity of the album. And nothing negative could be said of Andrea Zollo's work as a vocalist. The bass is like heavenly sourdough on an equally divine BLT sandwich.
As I listen through PGMG, I'm reminded of how undeservedly short the post-punk revival wave was. There are good examples of bands out there today, but most seem to have become dormant. Every time Drive Like Jehu comes out to play a show, I'm somewhere else. I've missed two or three opportunities since moving to California where I could have seen them. If PGMG would re-unite and tour, I would be the evangelist telling everybody to go see them.
We need to have a conversation about guitars in music today. I like them. I hate them. I mean, I like them when they sound good. I hate them when it's all they sound like. Something that makes PGMG so interesting is the eschewal of "follow the melody" with all their strings. Bass does it like it should. Guitars always seem to be taking turns diving into the ocean of noise. One verse, the strings are screeching and you could mistake them for a confused mathcore headbanger's breakdown; next they are taking turns massaging the listener in the arms of post-rock's orchestrated melting pot of sine waves.
Some moments they invoke the best moments of Circa Survive in the space of fifteen seconds. Then they summon the Franz Ferdinand-oise chops, shredding the strings in measured bursts. Touches of indie-pop electronica pervade their albums in the tinest spaces. PGMG brings new life to the adage that less is more. While they aren't musically minimalist, they are most certainly musically prudent in their usage of noise, guitar, melody, harmony (or lack thereof), and always seem to leave a good taste in my mouth.
Don't miss out. Besides, if Trump gets the next presidency, it might come back for the next four years. I can't imagine a second presidential term would happen anyway.
Nick
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