Screaming Females paid their dues in the basements and closet-size venues of New Brunswick, New Jersey, which despite its size and suburban dispersion boasts an active punk scene. Dodging bottles and cups thrown by their rowdy audiences, the trio developed considerable chops before signing with local label Don Giovanni: Jarrett Dougherty is a heavy drummer mercifully spare with fills, "King Mike" Abbate a bass player graciously liberal with melody, and Marissa Paternoster a guitar player with an enormous musical vocabulary that includes everything from classic rock to hardcore to New Wave to indie to lo-fi. Punk has traditionally prized attitude over abilities, but Screaming Females have both: Rather than muzzle their ferocity, the band's tight, tense dynamic amplifies the fuck-off stridency of their fourth LP, Castle Talk.
There's only one female in the group, but Paternoster earns that plural band name. As a singer, she has a mighty howl that's as regal and haughty as that album title implies. She shreds and wails through these songs, grinds and slashes, often changing battle strategy abruptly. In fact, part of the thrill of listening to Castle Talk is trying to predict what she'll do next, how she'll bend the scouring lick on "Ghost Solo" into a song-destroying outro or how she'll turn the menacing riff of "A New Kid" inside out. As with her lyrics, Paternoster's guitar playing may sound stream-of-conscious, but there's an internal logic to her fretwork as well as a careful economy that favors sneering repetition of themes and compact solos. Due to gender and contemporaneousness, it's tempting to lump her in with Marnie Stern, but Paternoster has more in common with the Doug Martsch, J Mascis, Carrie Brownstein, and Neil Young (the Females covered "Cortez the Killer" on an early single)-- all artists who have subsumed themselves into tight band units yet manage to sound utterly distinctive.
In that regard, the most interesting aspect of Castle Talk is the way Paternoster fulfills her frontwoman status by turning each song into a dialogue-- or, perhaps, an argument-- between voice and guitar. On "Boss", she adopts a shaky tone that gives each note a stressed wobble even as she declares, "I could be the boss of you any day." The effect is that of a woman steeling herself for a fight, psyching herself up to defy. On the other hand, her guitar swoops in suddenly to punctuate the chorus of "I Don't Mind It", adding emphatic certainty to her declaration that "it's just never enough." Her riffs alternately underline and undermine her vocals, but she thrives on the conflict between her dual instruments, as well as between herself and the band, the band and the world. That sense of scene survival energizes and innervates these songs: "I'm joyfully employed and normal!" she asserts on "Normal", as if we might miss that all three of them are enjoying every note.
