SHOW ME THE BODY
For New York-based hard-core punk rock band Show Me the Body, performances aren’t just about crowd participation but rather an ever-growing showing of solidarity from fans across the United States and abroad.
The band, currently vocalist and banjo player Julian Cashwan Pratt, bass and synth player Harlan Steed and drummer Jackie McDermott, cut its teeth by playing local gigs before moving on to early sets at major events, including the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio in 2017 and out on the European festival circuit as it’s been embraced by a global audience.
“When we play, there is no sense of icon,” Pratt said during a recent phone interview. The band is promoting its third album, “Trouble the Water,” and has local stops at Brick by Brick in San Diego on Feb. 26, The Observatory in Santa Ana on Feb. 28 and The Regent Theater in Los Angeles on March 1.
“All the children and the people at the shows know it’s for them and belongs to them,” he continued. “It’s lovely to meet kids from other countries that see us and feel like it belongs to them too.”
The band has a lot of respect for its music community, which informs how and where it performs. Pratt has expressed his disdain for the strict 21-or-older clubs in its native New York, and the band strives to make shows accessible to fans of all ages whenever possible. Show Me the Body often performs free and impromptu shows and in the past has pulled up to play in alleyways, abandoned buildings, dance halls and even under the Manhattan Bridge during a storm, just to bring the people together.
During that performance, Pratt recalled, when the rain and law enforcement arrived, the fans watching helped the band members pack up and protect their gear.
“The whole idea of playing outside,
When: Where:
Tickets: Also: doing something that is for free and a little more lawless, but not overtly dangerous and isn’t so cut and dry, takes a little more work,” Pratt said. “The story of these scenarios is less about building a fan base and more about building an insular, community family. When you need help and are doing something fun and different, the people who step in are the people with whom you establish long-life relationships with.”
The approach of occupying any space for a show is one of the founding principles of punk rock and its DIY philosophy. Providing accessible shows is also part of that history, Pratt said, and the idea is to keep things more true to the scene that elevated the movement.
“We think of punk rock, and even rock ’n’ roll on a larger scale, as an American folk tradition, so our goal is not to sound like other people, but to further the tradition of punk rock and hard-core and add to the lineage and the history of this beautiful music,” he said.
Show Me the Body is all about uplifting its community. The band’s 2017 “Corpus I,” a collaborative mix tape, featured several of the band’s friends, including Princess Nokia, Denzel Curry and Dreamcrusher. Steed said the project started because the record label they were working with asked them to record a single, but they got carried away in the studio.
“It was just really putting on our friends,” Pratt said. “When we say that, we really mean that we establish relationships with other people because we like their music, imagination and outlook on reality. We’re proud to know these people, not just because we like them, but because we appreciate how they interpret reality through their expression.”
That sort of cross collaboration of artists set the foundation for Show Me the Body and friends to establish CORPUS, a collective of artists and organizers that soon formed its own space, label and studio. Its focus on community programming and empowerment paved the way for Corpus Family in the summer of 2019. It provides New Yorkers with studio access, self-defense classes and book clubs and helps organize coat drives and mutual aid projects.
Show Me the Body’s latest album is amplified by its dedication to community and to fighting back against anything that threatens it. Like the band’s two previous albums, the third release is armed with a violent mix of noise, sludge, hard-core and hip-hop but doesn’t skimp on grooves and melodies. Steed’s bass and synth effects give the band a grandeur that allows it to combine juxtaposing sounds seamlessly over its heavy drums. Pratt’s vocals carry a cadence that is reminiscent of the frontmen of the UK punk bands of the ’70s, and he often goes into a spoken word style over the riffs of his amped-up banjo.
Lyrically, “Trouble the Water” delves into topics such as gentrification, police brutality and anarcho-distribution of wealth, and although these conversations are sharp, Pratt said they’re not trying to be political.
“We don’t consider ourselves concerned with politics as much as we concern ourselves with what we think is right,” he said. “It doesn’t have to do with the binary of left or right conversation, but more about standing up for ourselves and others.”