SCREAMING FEMALES / SCRAP BRAIN | LIVE REVIEW
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Sun 9 Sept
Alarming to look up the date of Screaming Females’ last Cardiff performance, for the purpose of some quick introductory nostalgia, and discover it was a few weeks shy of eight years ago. Feels like way less, maybe because it was a revelation to me – I knew of this New Jersey band, had even heard a bit of their garage/indie/hard rock triangulation, but wasn’t prepared for what a marvellous live band they were. Primary credit for that went to singer/guitarist Marissa Paternoster, who was about five feet tall, hollered like a demon and walked into the audience to play ripping metal solos.
Captivating in 2010, and equally so now: all the above also applies to their set downstairs in Clwb Ifor, witnessed by a decent-for-a-Sunday audience with a surprising-to-me youthfulness. None of Screaming Females’ three albums and scattered other releases since have threatened to make them huge, but sheer persistence, an inherent affability and lush tunes spiked with has accrued them some card-carrying fans. (A middle-aged fella standing behind me is wearing a t-shirt portraying a pub called the Paternoster, which I assume isn’t coincidental.) They’re also sound enough to impose a new band on most of those present – tour support Scrap Brain, a great and fiery London hardcore quartet whose typically fast, blunt and noisy set features a new drummer, Bethan Chainey, and a new song, Die TERF Scum. A beatnik-looking couple dance in inappropriate style at the front, as if jiving in a Carnaby Street coffee shop.
Screaming Females play with good and righteous punk attitude – no encores, ya rubes – but often demonstrate blowsy rockist flamboyance suited to Earth’s most altitudinous stadium (maybe that one in Bolivia). Paternoster is going ham in the crowd about three songs in, and is a trick-box of poses and sick guitar tones consistently. At various points they remind one of Dinosaur Jr, the Buzzcocks, Smashing Pumpkins, Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy and Helium, but have alchemised this into something in their own image. You’d have to really hate the sound of guitars not to be thrilled by this band, seriously.
words and photos NOEL GARDNER