'Stuff is Always'

On Oct. 27, 2006 I saw a loud little band play a loud little free show around Halloween at an outdoor pavilion on College Avenue in the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers University. They were called the Screaming Females, only just one of them was female. And she didn’t scream so much, but she wailed on her guitar. They kicked a lot of ass on that chilly evening, and every once in a while in the ensuing years I wondered whatever happened to them. I figured, like most college bands, they probably broke up.

Fast forward to 2009: I and a buddy went to the final night of the Bouncing Souls’ Home for the Holidays shows at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park to see Chuck Ragan (Hot Water Music) open for New Brunswick’s native sons. And who opened the night? The damned Screaming Females. And in the three years since I had seen them, they had gone from pretty good to bloody amazing.

In 2010, they put out the absolutely stunning “Castle Talk” (my thoughts on that) and now they’re doing a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR promoting a new album, the Steve Albini-produced “Ugly.”

They sound a little subdued but still really awesome here, and I love that they close with “I Don’t Mind It” from “Castle Talk,” a song that by all rights should have been the biggest single, like, ever, if there was justice in the world.

Note: thanks to the terrifically comprehensive shows list on the Screaming Females website, I was able to determine where and when I saw them for the first time.

nprmusic:

The Screaming Females’ keen sense of song prevails in this Tiny Desk Concert, especially in a new song called “It All Means Nothing.”