Screaming Females have less developed and more improved on a template already in place over the past eight hours, the New Brunswick band cover a middle ground between jam, indie and punk with Marissa Paternoster shredding and riffing and bassist King Mike and drummer Jarrett Daugherty filling in the cracks and then some.
At their farewell to Maxwell’s matinee gig on Sunday, that is exactly what we got. A brisk, relentless, 45 minute set with the trio loudly intent on a self minded move from a to b through sound. Well oiled and loose and coiled at the same time, there was something both rote and unique about the performance. Marissa has been suffering through the chronic pain of mono last year and only recently back on stage, any time you check out the band is a relief.
Maxwell’s was sold out and the audience were mostly absorbed and interested, the vibe very post-Garbage musicologists rock fans, except at the front of the stage where despite the cramp quarters a mosh pit started up and some foolhardy guys body surfed. Marissa is still the goth daughter of a horror movie although not quite as goth or daughterly, she has grown her hair our and lost the Victorian garb for a mid summers afternoon. On stage, Marissa is cooler than I remember, only a couple of times does she open her mouth wide and roar.
For me the problem with reviewing Screaming Females is I am not sure of song titles. Listening to Screaming Females is not unlike listening to Sylvie Vartan, it is as if they are playing in a different language and the song hooks blur. Marissa is like Louis Armstrong, her voice sounds like her instrument, they complement each other, and they join together, but they merge into one song. With no “Skull” and no “Sheep” , all I recognize is a late “Laura + Marty” which sounds much more rockabilly live and an encore of “I Don’t Mind It”. But it doesn’t really bother me, there is all this bottled up energy and it explodes like pow on the jams and the solos and when the band returns to the vocals it still explodes.
But it is really difficult to see anything, and when Marissa bends down to nail a riff, she disappears from sight entirely, since, really, as she becomes a master of melodic guitar riffing who clings to her guitar like a life raft and for whom every major improvement has been in sonic ability, even the Ugly album isn’t about Albini, we want to watch her hands the way we want to watch Gary Clark Jr’s hands.
The band have changed a little the screaming roar has become a dexterous scowl, it still enters like a drill in your skull but it also enters like a wall of guitar sound. Marissa uses her scream but it isn’t about that, this is more an improvised jam band with a sense of punk temerity.
As a New Jersey band, Screaming Females are there to say goodbye to the institute they have played ten times. Marissa told Alex Biese of Asbury Park Press: “I grew up in Elizabeth, which is 20, 30 minutes away from Hoboken, so when I was old enough to go to Maxwell’s, Michael (Abbate) from Screaming Females and I would go see the Dirtbombs a lot and just a lot of garage rock stuff,” Paternoster recalled. “We saw the Undertones, we saw the Brian Jonestown Massacre there. I saw a lot of stuff there, so by the time we got to be on the stage I was like, ‘Holy crap, this place has had some of my favorite bands play on this stage,’ like the Pixies, Pavement, stuff like that. So I was really excited to be on that stage and be in that club and be a part of that history.”
Opening band Nuclear Santa Claust are a Don Giovanni specialty punk rock trio who powered drived their way through a smart, fast paced set.
Grade: B+