The members of Screaming Females have just released the leadoff single to the band’s upcoming album, Ugly (due April 3rd on Don Giovanni Records). You can listen to the track below (via Rolling Stone). Last month, the New Brunswick-based punk trio stopped by the NPR Music office to record a Tiny Desk Concert, which you can also check out below. Screaming Females performs at Long In The Tooth Records on Wednesday, February 15th.
Screaming Females
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Weekend Concert Picks: Screaming Females at The Barbary, Uh Huh Her at TLA, tUne-YarDs at Union Transfer
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7
Punk trio Screaming Females is celebrating its emerging adulthood by reissuing its first two albums in a very grown-up vinyl format. The band has come a long way since its self-released debut, Baby Teeth, was written and recorded in drummer (and then-high schooler) Michael Abbate’s attic six years ago. Like many angsty New Jersey teens, the members of Screaming Females started performing in their friends’ basements; unlike most New Jersey teens, however, the band gradually went from touring Jersey to touring nationally with bigger punk acts such as Against Me! and Ted Leo. Though much of the band’s popularity is credited to the members’ dedication to the group, just as much success can be credited to their simple formula in creating skin-and-bone punk-rock songs. Disregarding the extraneous bells and whistles of highly-produced music, Screaming Females offers a more no-nonsense sound, resting largely on heavy yet simple chord progressions and vocalist Marissa Paternoster’s unforgiving tone when belting out the group’s tunes. Screaming Females performs with Underground Railroad To Candyland and Dry Feet at 6:30 p.m. at The Barbary; tickets to the all-ages show are $10. —Marielle Mondon
Also Playing: The Deli’s 3rd Anniversary show with Dangerous Ponies + Orbit To Leslie, The Homophones at Kung Fu Necktie (8 p.m., 21+, $10); Kuf Knotz + Alien Architect, The Authentic at Milkboy Philly (9:30 p.m., 21+, $8–$10); The Besnard Lakes + Malajube at Johnny Brenda’s (9 p.m., 21+, $10–$12); Robert Randolph and the Family Band with Tauk at the TLA (7 p.m., $40.00/includes service charge).
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8
Uh Huh Her’s show at the TLA marks the low-fi electro-pop duo’s first stop of the Keep A Breast Tour. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Uh Huh Her is undergoing a month-long, 21-stop tour that will raise money for the Keep A Breast Foundation, a non-profit project targeted toward educating young people about breast cancer. In addition to breast cancer awareness, though, the band has its sophomore album, Nocturnes, to promote. The album, which drops on Tuesday, is the band’s follow-up to 2008’s Common Reaction and the first new release after being dropped from its label. (The album will be released via the band’s own label, Plaid Records.) Despite these changes, the album’s lead single, “Another Case,” still rests on Uh Huh Her’s signature airy, moaned vocals and heavy use of synthesizer to create a subtle, seductive sound. Uh Huh Her performs with Fences at 8 p.m. at TLA; tickets to the all-ages show are $25. —Marielle Mondon
Also Playing: James Blake + Chairlift at The Trocadero (9 p.m., all ages, $21–$23); Skrillex + 12th Planet, Foreign Beggars, Nadastrom at Electric Factory (7:30 p.m, all ages, SOLD OUT); The Lemonheads + The Shining Twins, New York Rivals at North Star Bar (9 p.m., 21+, $20–$25)
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9
Merrill Garbus’s musical project tUne-YarDs seems to exist purely to contradict: contradict expectations, contradict convention and, at times, to contradict itself. Garbus’s voice, which is capable of swinging between a soothing, cooing purr and a growling, leaping roar, is at once ferociously vulnerable, fiercely disarming. The 32-year-old New-England native first gained attention for her 2009 self-produced debut album “BiRd-BrAiNs,” which she recorded on a hand-held digital recorder and mixed using the software Audacity. It was rereleased later that year by 4AD records, who signed Garbus, identifying in her lo-fi, freak-folk first release creative genius. On Garbus’ second album (out this year on 4AD), “w h o k i l l,” she applies her superhuman sound masterfully, and her songs have a certain urgency, a raw, emotional energy to them. Hear them for yourself when she performs with Pat Jordache and Les Blondettes this weekend. tUne-YarDs performs with Pat Jordache and Les Blondettes at 8 p.m. at Union Transfer; tickets to the all-ages show are $15. —Naomi Shavin
Also Playing: Ladytron + VHS Or Beta at TLA (7 p.m., all ages, $19)
Tonight’s Concert Pick: Screaming Females + Against Me! at The Trocadero
Screaming Females, the fierce punk trio from New Brunswick, NJ, isn’t interested in breaking gender stereotypes in punk—they want to demolish them. Lead singer Marissa Paternoster, who couldn’t possibly be more than five feet and a few inches tall, packs a wallop in her voice and her guitar that her contemporaries simply can’t match. With a petite stature and a collected, almost demure stage presence, Paternoster led Screaming Females out of the garages and basements of the Jersey underground punk scene to an opening slot on The Dead Weather’s 2009 tour. Bassist “King Mike” Abbate and drummer Jarrett Dougherty round out the trio, and together the three craft some of the most inspired and creative punk music available today. If you don’t catch them at their second tour stop of the summer at the Troc, they’ll also be playing the Crocodile Rock in Allentown on June 4. Screaming Females performs with Against Me! and Lemuria at the Trocadero at 8 p.m.; tickets to the all-ages show are $15. —Danielle Wayda
Screaming Females release new video for “Wild” (off 2010′s Castle Talk)
Since 2005, Screaming Females has been one of the hardest grassroots touring bands in the extended area, sharing bills with Jeff The Brotherhood and Ted Leo And The Pharmacists, playing basements, clubs, and DIY spaces, and gathering a loyal, passionate following. The New Brunswick, NJ-based rock trio recently released a new video for the song “Wild,” which was on its explosive 2010 release, Castle Talk. Lead singer and guitarist Marissa Paternoster has the kind of guitar power that fits somewhere between J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, with a vocal delivery that echoes some of the best found during Riot Grrrl’s early-’90s heyday. Watch her work.
Tonight’s Pick: Ted Leo + Screaming Females (record-release show) at The Ox
Ted Leo—the hardest-working man in indie-rock—turned more than a few heads late last month when he posted a massive missive on his website about the promises and perils of making money off one’s art. It wasn’t the first time in history that a musician debated profiting from his hard work—but it might have been the first time someone did so by publishing a rambling, 3200-word monologue that touched on everything from writing for late-’90s fanzines to working with Lookout! Records’ press department to booking tours from pay-phones on the side of the road. By the end, Leo came to the conclusion that 1) money=good, and 2) the best way to make some money was to get into the musical theater business; he then announced that, the following week, he would reveal the new project, which he had already completed. (Cue one giant “WTF?!” from the Internet.)
The good news is that it was all just a big joke, and you won’t be seeing “one of those half-assed musicals that’s going to cheapen [his] music and embarrass everyone involved” (such as Green Day’s American Idiot Broadway musical). The better news is that the “completed project” is actually the video for “Bottled In Cork” off this year’s The Brutalist Bricks, which—in addition to being pretty funny video for a pretty amazing song—featured Philly-born comedian Paul F. Tompkins. The bad news is that, well, we kind of wanted to see The Brutalist Bricks: The Musical. Instead, we’ll just have to settle for a set of catchy indie-rock pulled from the eight top-notch albums and EPs he’s released under the Pharmacists moniker in the last decade. Ted Leo performs with Screaming Females (who celebrate the release of their brand-new album, Castle Talk, during tonight’s show), Women, and Dry Feet at 7:30 p.m. at The Ox.