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Music

Perfect Pussy

PERFECT PUSSY with MEXICAN SLANG and NON-STOP GIRLS at the Silver Dollar (486 Spadina), Saturday (January 25), doors 9 pm. $10.50. RT, SS.


There are some band names you don’t want to accidentally Google Image. Perfect Pussy is one of them. Singer Meredith Graves wasn’t aware of this because, as a member of the always-touring Syracuse punk band, she hasn’t had regular internet access, or a home or computer, for the last while.

But she knows the awkwardness the name can cause.

“My mom hates it,” she says from a southern Florida tour stop. “She’s so mad at me that she didn’t even call me at Christmas. She doesn’t get it at all and thinks I’ve destroyed my future and will never be able to have a real job again. To which I say I could not get a real job in the first place.”

If their electrifying forthcoming debut album, Say Yes To Love (Captured Tracks, March 18), is any indication, the four-piece will be busy for a long time. Over a charging noise punk fray, Graves scream-sings bracingly honest lyrics about, primarily, the demise of what she calls her first-ever healthy romantic relationship. The band’s profile-raising demo EP from last year, meanwhile, focused on an abusive relationship she was in before that.

In interviews, she’s just as open. For all her onstage ferocity and fast-talking intensity – “I’m getting a reputation for being a loudmouth bitch who causes a lot of problems, and I’m completely fine with that and I’m never going to shut up, ever!” – she says she’s so terrified about what people will think of Say Yes that she’s going to need to be medicated by the time it comes out. About her vocals being slightly more audible in the mix than on the EP, she groans, “Not my doing, man. I offer the world an apology for that.”

She admits to recently sobbing in fear while riding a roller coaster, and softens when talking about the only book she’s brought on the current tour: When Things Fall Apart, by Buddhist monk Pema Chödrön. Along with Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse, it was the album’s main influence and encouraged her to embrace the idea that nothing is permanent: relationships, life, self-concepts.

“I realized that the reason I don’t like myself and why I’m so angry is because I have this egocentric self-concept of myself as an abuse victim,” Graves says. “All those songs on the demo about abuse, that’s who I think I am. And that can wear on you after a while. Getting onstage every night singing about it? That shit can give you a headache.

“So I guess [Say Yes] is kind of a record about breaking up with myself. I broke up with myself and then I wrote a few songs about it. I don’t know who I am any more, and I’ve had to realize that that’s okay.”

Interview Clips

Meredith Graves talks about how singing for a living is only partly about having a good voice:

Download associated audio clip.

About being fearless onstage but terrified on a roller coaster:

Download associated audio clip.

About her reservations about getting too political:

Download associated audio clip.

carlag@nowtoronto.com | @carlagillis

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