Down Is Up discusses music that falls slightly under the radar of our usual coverage: demos and self-releases, as well as output from small or overlooked labels and communities. This time, Jenn Pelly highlights the new live album from Screaming Females and shares a video from the shows.
Over their nine-year run, New Jersey punk power-trio Screaming Females have become better known for their explosive shows than their many albums, which makes the idea of a live record from them particularly appealing. The just-released Live at the Hideout should serve as an entryway to their vast catalogue, while capturing the intensity of their performances and documenting how 900+ gigs can turn a song into something totally new. It was recorded in Chicago by Steve Albini, who also produced the group's 2012 full-length Ugly, and who actually says something positive in the record's press release: "They are a great band and I hope they keep going forever."
Today Screaming Females are sharing a video from the Hideout gigs, capturing their monstrous take on 2007's "Boyfriend", a raw freakout of crowd-surfing and bloodcurdling shrieks. Screaming Females are currently on tour with Kathleen Hanna's band the Julie Ruin. Front-shredder Marissa Paternoster and drummer Jarrett Dougherty took some time out to answer a few questions about the release, which out today on Don Giovanni.
Pitchfork: Why a Screaming Females live album?
Jarrett Dougherty: The easy answer is that [Don Giovanni co-head] Joe Steinhardt kept begging us to do one. Joe is a big fan of live records. He will often prefer listening to some rare Neil Young bootleg over a studio album. Or like a 45-minute Prince practice jam session. Joe convinced us that it was worth making a live album because there are so many live albums and films that are definitive documents of certain artists. He felt that a live Screaming Females album could be our definitive document.
Pitchfork: Why is it the right time for one?
JD: There would pretty much never be a right time for a live record for us. We like to keep studio releases coming pretty regularly, so a live album kind of conflicts with our release schedule. It is cool to be doing a live album nine years after some of the songs on it were originally recorded. Certain songs, like "Foul Mouth" or "Baby Jesus" from our first album, have evolved quite a bit over the years. The fact that you can look up a poorly shot YouTube video of about half the shows we have ever played seems to make a live album redundant—and maybe it does! But for me, a properly recorded and released live album stands out even more now with the onslaught of shitty live media and throwaway free live release downloads.
Pitchfork: Your band is known more for its live presence than its albums. What are you hoping Live at the Hideout will capture about the shows?
Marissa Paternoster: People often tell me that they prefer our live show to our studio albums. I'm not sure if that's meant as a compliment. It certainly doesn't insult me or anything, but I'm hoping that all of those folks will get whatever it is they've been looking for in a recorded Screaming Females' album from Live at the Hideout.
Pitchfork: How was the tracklist arrived at? What does it say about the Screaming Females catalogue?
JD: Live, we tend to run a bunch of songs together. Instead of playing a song, and then stopping and playing another, our set tends to turn into chunks. We wanted to keep those chunks together, to keep the album feeling natural. A few sides of the LP are pretty much a chunk exactly as it was played over one of the two nights. We wanted to choose the songs that sound the most different from their album versions. What's the point of just re-recording a bunch of songs the same way? So the tracklist includes a lot of songs that we improvise on, or have changed slightly over the years.
Pitchfork: Why did you record at the Hideout? I read that Albini had to camp out in a truck outside, as a control room, because the venue was small.
MP: When the idea of making a live album first came up, we had originally intended to record it at Maxwell's in Hoboken, N.J. After recording our fifth studio album, Ugly, I came down with mononucleosis and was chronically falling ill for the remainder of the year. Maxwell's wound up closing, and we put the live album on the back burner until I was feeling better. We'd been to the Hideout before and had a terrific time. It's a similar size to Maxwell's and it's been around for eons. Steve Albini and Timothy Powell teamed up in Tim's mobile studio and recorded to two inch tape in the alleyway behind the Hideout. I was sad to see Maxwell's go, to say the least... but the live album came together nicely nonetheless.
Photo by Sean O'Kane