Murder for Girls hooks up with Tommy Stinson of the Replacements for third album
Murder for Girls had the good fortune of squeezing in a show at Club Cafe on March 9, right before the pandemic blew in, but the plans for spring have gone awry like everyone else’s.
The Pittsburgh garage rock band was set for an early May show at Cattivo to roll out its third album, “Done in the Dark,” the follow-up to 2017’s “All the Pretty Stars,” which was recorded here with Jason Jouver of Don Caballero.
This time, the quartet, which rocks in the spirit of bands like Bikini Kill, SleaterKinney and Hole, ventured to Hudson, N.Y., to work with Tommy Stinson, the legendary bassist who jumped from The Replacements to Guns N’ Roses while also fronting solo project Bash & Pop.
While Stinson’s roots might be in noisy chaos, Murder for Girls — singer-guitarists Tammy and Stephanie Wallace (no relation), bassist Jonathan Bagamery, and drummer Michele Dunlap — found him wanting to unfuzz the band’s sound for a cleaner approach that highlighted the songs.
They had those in the form of punchy rockers like “Star,” “Semiautomatic” and “Goth Girls,” acted out in a playful video directed by Trevor Richards and Manny Theiner.
“Done in the Dark” is about to appear on streaming sites and Murder for Girls hopes to see you live in August. Here’s what Tammy Wallace had to say about the project:
So, what is your relationship with Tommy Stinson? When did that start?
I’ve seen him, as a big Replacements fan, I’ve seen him at a lot of little shows. He’s just a very approachable person. He comes to Pittsburgh, and we just kind of became friends. When we were looking to record, we were going to do it locally. And it wasn’t against anybody around here, but I happened to say, “You know, I think that he records bands and if you want me to ask ... ” — and they all wanted me to ask. So I did, and he said “Yes.” He prefers to record bands that are in his wheelhouse. It wasn’t like we were some genre that he wasn’t familiar with. We’re just a four-piece, pretty simple rock band, and his method for recording matched ours — which was, we usually did it in a weekend, and that’s how he’s used to doing it. “Not too many takes, just try to get the best takes,” he said, “like the records they did in the ’80s.” We’d do maybe three takes or something and pick the best one, and if there were any flubs, we’d just try to fix it with today’s technology.
What was the experience like of being there at the studio?
He lives in Hudson, N.Y., and he has a studio that’s adjacent to a hair salon, like an old ballet studio. It was funny because we pre-rehearsed the songs on a Friday night, and then we actually started recording later in the afternoon on Saturday so that the hair salon was closed, so they didn’t hear all the racket. And then we had all day Sunday, so it was almost less than a weekend that we pulled it off. There was a moment when I was pre-rehearsing Friday night with him, and he’s your friend and a normal person, but you have a moment where you’re kind of like, “Holy heck, I’m standing here playing next to Tommy
Stinson of The Replacements.” Your 19year-old self is like, “I didn’t think this would happen.”
How do you think it turned out differently than if you had recorded here with somebody else?
Well, mostly, when you’re recording locally, you’re not really depending on that person to tell you what they think is best that you do, because they’re not going to tell you that, because it’s your music. He would throw in his opinions. He might tell us to play a drumbeat differently, or don’t strum so many chords in that part, or try singing it with more grit, things like that. He changed our guitar sounds. We were very distorted and he was more clean, which I think came out well. And you know, we added a little of that on for certain songs. The philosophy was that you can’t take it off once you put it all on, but you can always add some on later.
Was there discussion within the band about how you felt about cleaning up the guitars like that?
We just kind of discussed beforehand that we should take all of his opinions and ideas and give them a chance, even if there is something that we’re not used to, and see what happens. I think that you can hear more of the backing vocals and stuff that way, too.
When were the songs written, and how did you go about doing that?
After the last album, “All the Pretty Stars,” we just started writing again, so some of them had been at least a year or more. We had played them all out, so we went up there, we had them all ready to go.
Is there a primary writer, or do you do it all together?
Mostly our method, and it works well, has been that Jonathan kind of plays more like a guitar player — his basslines are more intricate, more chords in them — and he comes up with a lot of song ideas just on bass. And then usually one of us will say, “Oh, I like that one. I have an idea for that,” and we add our guitar, lyrics and melodies and bring it into the band, and then everybody else adds their part. For a change, Steph did write two songs on there that she just wrote herself and Jonathan added basslines after the fact.
Do you have favorites on the record?
I really like “Star,” but I think within the band we’re really happy with how “Exposure” came out, and “Goth Girls” was really fun and lent itself to a concept video. It’s the first video we filmed, and we made a video based on the lyrics. Our third full-length album, we finally made a video.
Yeah, I saw that it was inspired by [goth DJ] Kelly Litzenberger.
It came from this story of Jonathan looking for a place to hang flyers, and she gave him these detailed instructions, so we talked about how there are these very helpful “Goth Girls” in the world. We thought that would be a really good song idea. Michele took that.
So, have you guys been able to get together at all?
The last time we saw each other, we had the show at Club Cafe and then that next weekend everything started. We’ve talked to each other on Zoom and Skype. We’re supposed to play the Millvale Music Festival — they’re still planning for Aug. 8 right now, but I’m not sure about that. We’ll see what happens.