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THE NEW ROMANCE
(MATADOR)
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Pretty Girls Make Graves have established a reputation as an incendiary live act. But on their second studio effort, the Seattle post-punk quintet moderate their full-speed-ahead tendencies with a more nuanced sound. For the guitar-playing duo of Nathan Thelen and Jason Clark, that means balancing their dense tangle of jagged chordings with more open passages where one-time Murder City Devil Derek Fudesco’s bass and skeletal piano spar with the shifting rhythms of drummer Nick Dewitt. The two guitarists buzz and circle around a hard-hitting hook before going in for the kill on "Something Bigger, Something Brighter" and "Chemical, Chemical."
All of which might sound fairly typical if it weren’t for the magnetic presence of tough-yet-vulnerable frontwoman Andrea Zollo. Her delivery splits the difference between the intensity of a Kathleen Hanna and the intimacy of a Kim Wilde, and her lyrics ponder love, neuroses, self-medication, and underdog living. The result gives Pretty Girls Make Graves both an edge that justifies their live reputation and a lot more than one weapon to work with in the studio.
