So here is the question on the tip of your tongue: why Noun? Why did Marissa Paternoster, singer and guitarist for Screaming Females, need another outlet for her not inconsiderable talents?
I always have problems with offshoot bands, say Thom Yorke’s Atoms For Peace, or James Mercer’s Danger Mouse.
Because:
1) They are never as good as the original band
and
2) They seem a little whatever. Why couldn’t Mercer have done Broken Bells songs with the Shins. Does he really think Mr. Mouse’s coupla bleeps and a blast mattered THAT MUCH?
So I am listening to Holy Hell and I am loving it as I would but I am thinking it is really just a Screaming Females album under a different name, particularly with the presence of one man force field SF drummer Jarrett Dougherty.
So I went in search of something that might clue me in and I found it: Jon Behm’s review on reviler.
Here is the link:
Jon makes three points:
1. Marissa wrote all the songs by herself.
2.She is playing with people she usually doesn’t play with
3. She tones down her own guitar and without needing to sing through the music, she sounds vulnerable.
“Holy Hell” is a touch more melodic Screaming Females and I love it dearly but “Call Earth” and “So Rough” are embryonic power ballads: stripped bare they would stand up as songs of romantic loss. “Black Lamb” which opens with just piano and which seems to be another heartbreaker “will i lose all feeling…” she wonders rather than worries and the pain is palpable. “I will win the contest when my best friend dies” she claims on another song and fretting through the album is a sense of emotional, I don’t think this is too strong a word, devastation. A catapulation to private disturbances.
I kinda hate reviewing albums in this way, like a two day immersion, and then a final statement on the subject of Holy Hell. It’s too early. I don’t have a final thought. Just a coupla idea trickling down:
1. The guitar break on “Holy Hell” is enormous. It is an enormous sound.
2. Marissa is a great singer.
3. “Black Lamb” could be Lady Gaga or maybe I mean Elton John -it has that piano based piano standard to it.
4. About half would be fine for Screaming Females.
5. The end of “So Rough”? Goddamn make me cry: “How did it end this way, I miss you day to day” is not just beatifully sung and felt it is an empathic testament to what is gone.
6. Maybe, just maybe, the songs were so personal she needed to carry them alone?
Good album? Definitely? Make my best of the year? For sure. A great album… I dunno.It hasn’t cohered in my brain yet. I need more time. I need to listen to it more and I shall.