Crossing boundaries
Memphis-based band adds a psychedelic edge to straightforward punk
Straightforward punk cleverly tainted with wah pedals and distortion give Memphis’ Nots a cool, psychedelic edge. “I would describe our sound as we’re constantly experimenting with the boundaries of genres, especially or specifically punk and psychedelic music and, of course, rock ’n’ roll is a part of that inherently,” frontwoman Natalie Hoffman said of Nots’ music.
When Hoffman is not taking on vocal duties and playing guitar for Nots, she’s
tending bar or creating as a visual artist who serves as a part-time instructor of Adobe Photoshop and design. The band’s name derives from one of Hoffman’s creations, which was inspired by the game Twister.
“I make collages, and the name Nots actually came from a collage that had a Twister spinner on it,” she said. “You know, it says it “ties you up in knots,” and that phrase was left on the collage. Me and Charlotte (Watson, drummer) and our former bassist Carly (Blackwell) were looking around the room and we were, like, ‘What about Nots?’”
Nots’ music is not all fun and games. Things sometimes gets serious, such as on its song “Entertain Me,” on the band’s latest album, “Cosmetic,” released in September.
“I don’t want to say that it’s necessarily about Donald Trump, because that’s incredibly pigeonholing, and honestly, that’s a really tired subject at this point,” Hoffman said. “But it is about the fact that our news and what we’re supposed to take for fact has turned into an entertainment industry and has given someone who was an entertainer solely, not someone who should be governing a country, the power to have that much airtime and that much ability to convince people what he believes is true, which was very scary to me. … So I wanted to confront the way that our news has turned into entertainment and the way that the idea of facts has become put on the same level of a reality television show and treated with the same flippant disregard in a lot of ways.”
During the making of “Cosmetic,” the band became more comfortable in its creative process.
“Cosmetic” is the band’s second release and a follow-up to its debut album, “We Are Nots.”
“I think the big difference between ‘Cosmetic’ and ‘We Are Nots’ is that we became more comfortable playing with each other, as far as like just being able to play and not overthink it and coming up with something that we’re excited about because we can all kind of predict how the other one will play and react to the way the song is going,” Hoffman said. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but the songs on ‘Cosmetic’ were more improvised than ‘We Are Nots,’ in a lot of ways.”