Butchies
3
[Mr Lady]
Rating: 8.4
There's a certain awareness bespoken by the simple, quiet title of the new
Butchies record. But ignore, for a moment, the extraneous facts-- they're a
trio, they've been releasing records for the past three years, the square root
of the number of songs on the record equals three, etc.-- and focus on the
fact that this is their third full-length release.
3 marks ex-Team Dresch frontwoman Kaia Wilson's personal best for the
most output from any of her projects. And now that excuses of beginner's
luck/jitters and sophomore slump/fluke are behind them, it's time for Alison
Martlew, Melissa York, and Wilson to truly prove themselves as a band that
can comfortably exist outside of the shadow of Wilson's past, and etch a name
for themselves that's all their own.
And they do. Like the two most significant female punk collectives that
immediately preceded them, Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, the Butchies take
full advantage of the importance of their third release by making good on the
potential of their previous two, and delivering their best album to date.
Like Pussywhipped or Dig Me Out, 3 indelibly marks the
Butchies with a simple, singular adjective: vital.
Through 3's refinement and cleanness, the Butchies have found their
collective voice. Gone are the oddball noodling of their debut, Are We Not
Femme?, and the constricting punk/hardcore framework that made
Population 1975 partially redundant and overwrought. 3 finds
the trio still armed with an arsenal of power chords, paralyzing basslines,
and explosive drums. Only now, the Butchies aren't drowning in reverb, or at
the prey of their genre. On 3, the girls fuck with conventions of punk
and hardcore, letting elements slip into more complicated structures, and
allowing these constituents to slip around Wilson's most consistently
rewarding songwriting to date.
The record's opener, "Anything Anthology," is the Butchies at their brazen
best. It begins with a ragged, slap-happy electric guitar intro that leads
into a glazed proclamation by Wilson: "This is nothing that you've ever felt
before." The song accelerates into raucous, break-neck punk before slowing to
a mid-tempo stomp for the song's chorus and slinking out with the grace of a
fading cyclone. When Wilson sings, "This is sorrow/ This is acrobats," she
unwittingly delivers a succinct critique of her voice: her ardent vocals
flutter over and flip under the track, particularly when she unleashes a
high-register "whoo-hoo-hoo." (The extra "hoo" proves she really means it).
Wilson's croon remains the centerpiece of the Butchies, as has been the case
for anything she's lent her pipes to. Previously, her angelic delivery has
found itself at odds with the grind and churn of her tunes (her acoustic solo
releases notwithstanding), which has provided a fascinating tension. And she's
equally dazzling on 3. While some delicious stress might be missing in
these less jarring tunes, Wilson capitalizes on this absence and proves herself
one of the most versatile, technically sound voices in current punk.
Of course, two adroit musicians in their own rights provide Wilson with
outstanding support. Martlew's lean bass playing adds buoyant funk to the
mix. York, who attacks her drumkit with the gusto of Animal (the Muppet),
holds and changes tempos like she's begging for a whiplash lawsuit.
All of this is wrapped up in the sophisticated gift that is 3. Even the
slower songs, which tend to start out shaky, never dissolve into doldrums due
to pointed hooks that poke like needles through the tracks' frieze carpeting.
The transition into uniformly melodic tunes is so expertly executed that the
one jarring moment, "Huh Huh Hear," sounds completely out of place. But this
slight regression hardly mars the record, since the great moments far outweigh
this three-minute misstep.
3 is the Butchies' most understated record to date, both musically and
lyrically. It's less political, though the trio's lesbianism remains obvious,
even when their tell-all bandname is ignored. "Queercore," in less capable
hands, would be an exploitative sub-genre that seeks novelty in sexuality and
offers little else (a la Pansy Division). But as Jeanette Winterson points out
in her essay, "The Semiotics of Sex": "...problems start when we assume that
the fact of our queerness bestows on us special powers." I'm not suggesting
that the Butchies have ever adhered to that assumption; I'm merely stating
that if the Butchies ever came off as gimmicky, or dependent on their sexuality
to sell records, 3 should silence naysayers. In fact, the record's
title is better suited as a description of the layered, visceral, and human
nature of the record; for the first time, the Butchies are consistently
playing in that number of dimensions.
-Richard M. Juzwiak