Screaming Females at the Bishop, IN

I was pretty excited about seeing Screaming Females last night from Jeanette’s report, so yesterday I bought their new CD, Baby Teeth.  After I listened to it, I was less excited.  The music sounded really good, but not as energetic and aggressive as I had imagined from what Jeanette reported.  The vocals stuck out, and not in a good way. It sounded like Marissa Paternoster was in a different room as the rest of the band, like the vocals were slapped on as an afterthought, and like someone had used a ton of effects to try to fix mediocre takes. A local music expert I was talking to before the show agreed with me.  He had come to the Bishop to have a beer, but was skipping the show.

I went, and was very glad I did. Not since Gogol Bordello have I heard a band who was so mediocre on record and yet so great live. The whole band blew me away, from their raw energy to their tight performance.  And, unlike on the record, Paternoster actually screamed.  The vocals worked really well in the live setting.  But don’t take my word for it, watch this video:

I was hoping to interview the band after the show, but they were tired from the night before and had to drive to Detroit for a show the next day. If I had been able to interview them, I would have asked Paternoster about the mods that have been done to her G&L Tribute, particularly what the extra switch does.  Jason Groth (from, among other things, one of our podcasts) surmised it is the “awesome switch.” We’ll go with that for now.

I would also have asked them about their stated frustration with attention from the “women in rock” camp, and the tendency for people to focus on Paternoster rather than the band as a whole, as discussed in this interview with the Chicago Sun-Times a little over a year ago.  Their name obviously encourages this.  In that interview they said the name was decided upon quickly before their first gig.  I wonder if they ever regret the decision.  If they had a name that didn’t emphasize the contrast between the raw energy of the music they play and Paternoster’s presence, I’m not sure they would get as much attention as they do. Her size and gender and the way she comes across in her quiet, shy little girl voiced banter between songs create a cognitive dissonance that set them apart from the average indie band.

And I would have asked them how the tour had been going; what it was like to play in Bloomington, Indiana a week after the Maxwell’s show in front of their home crowd.  As you can see from Jeanette’s post and photographs, the Maxwell’s show was pretty raucous. The show at the Bishop was pretty well attended and well received, but bands generally don’t get that kind of raw crowd energy in Bloomington, especially when students aren’t around.

It wasn’t Screaming Females’s first time in Bloomington.  Nick Bradley, aka Nick Romy, from Marine Corpse, one of the other bands on the bill, said that they had shared a bill with Screaming Females in a basement show four or five years ago. (Marine Corpse is on tour right now. Just try to find out where they are going to be and when. I dare you. I couldn’t find anything, and I looked pretty hard.)

Here are the remaining tour dates for Screaming Females.  Go see them.  You won’t regret it.