Keeping the dream of the 1990s alive
Youthful trio Potty Mouth crafts new album to sound like their favourite femme rock warriors
What’s the deal? Potty Mouth hails from Northampton, Mass., which puts the trio well within the orbit of Boston’s greatest-ever gift to eternal punk-rock teenagehood, Juliana Hatfield.
Perhaps, then, Potty Mouth was always subconsciously heading in the thoroughly Hatfield-ian direction of its latest, selftitled EP, a wall of candied crunch that sounds like a perfect marriage of Hatfield’s Only Everything and Veruca Salt’s American Thighs — with appropriately beefed-up, grunge-era-appropriate production by Sleater-Kinney/Bikini Kill/ Unwound producer John Goodmanson to boot.
On Potty Mouth, however, scrappy youngsters Abby Weems, Ally Einbinder and Victoria Mandanas made a diligent effort to remodel their already tuneful and rather riff-tastic sound in the image of some of their favourite ’90s femmerock warriors. And, oh my, does it work for them.
It’s essentially just a cleaned-up, slightly slowed-down version of the lovable Potty Mouth that first made a brash splash with the 2012 EP Sun Damageand then proved itself a giddily pissed-off pop band on 2013’s Hell Bent, but there’s no denying the rapid onset of maturity here. Just enough maturity, anyway.
Rest assured that through the bright new harmonies, vocalist/guitarist Weems still sounds like she’s perpetually rolling her eyes at everything and everyone in scorn.
Just a whole lotta fun. Sum up what you do in a few simple sentences “Write and play music that inspires us to do what we want with our lives, and hopefully that inspires other people to do the same.” What’s a song I need to hear right now? “Cherry Picking.” All hail the new, bruising Potty Mouth. Try getting the singsong chorus out of your head, and enjoy some biting commentary on consumer conformity — “How many pieces of yourself were picked out of what everyone else might call ‘the blue’?” sneers Weems — while you’re at it. The dirt-cheap video clip is a hoot, too. Where can I see them play? The Garrison, Wednesday, opening for Screaming Females and Casper Skulls. Details at garrisontoronto.com.