Image by Caralyn Green
Pretty Girls Make Graves in Philadelphia, Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Thousands of voices are listening on the band’s final tour
By Caralyn Green
Published: May 19th, 2007 | 3:42pm
There’s something finite about romance. As thrashing, clammy, and all-consuming as it is in the beginning, it seemingly and inevitably simmers to a sticky-sheeted ennui. The same could be said for bands, for genres, for cultural moments in which bands and genres feel relevant, moist, and infectious, embraced and bubbling beyond the margins.
With the announced dissolution and final tour of Pretty Girls Make Graves, riot grrrl takes one further blow to the bootstrap. It’s not that the mixed-gender Seattle post-punks have ever aligned themselves with the movement; in fact, they’ve often resisted comparisons to siblings-in-dissent Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. But on Wednesday, May 16, 2007, at the North Star Bar in Philadelphia, Pretty Girls Make Graves thrashed with as much writhing, confessional thunder and anvil-to-ground lightning as any Pacific Northwest grrrl-fronted group ought to.
PGMG took the stage at 11:30 p.m. on the dot, after adequate sets from Milwaukee’s Call Me Lightning and L.A. trio Moonrats, the band that guitarist Nathan Thelen formed after leaving PGMG a few years back. Admittedly, the sound at the North Star was a bit off kilter, with the bass amp drowning out the vocals to the first few PGMG songs, including opening numbers “Chemical, Chemical” and “The Number.” But by “This is Our Emergency,” all was reconciled. And when the tirelessly puckish Andrea Zollo belted out, “Stand up so I can see you! Shout out so I can hear you! Reach out so I can touch you!” the audience was more than happy to oblige. “A thousand voices, are you listening?” she bawled, with less urgency and uncertainty than in 2003, when The New Romance won us over for good. Yes, we’re listening. We’ve listened since 2002’s Good Health up through last year’s Élan Vital. We’re listening still, and Zollo knows this. The rest of the band knows this, too, but they proudly decline to go on without comrade-in-arms drummer Nick Dewitt, whose resignation spurred the upcoming split.
For a full hour and fifteen minutes, PGMG proved that – contrary to the lyrics of show stopper “Pyrite Pedestal” – the real tragedy is not that their act is “boring and old,” but that their act is barreling toward its final, door-slamming farewell that no bouquet of red roses can remedy. As Zollo laments on “The New Romance,” “Wishing this would last forever is futile when you know it won’t.” Here’s to futility.
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Photos by Caralyn Green
Issue #35
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