Screaming Females don't immediately seem like a band that's been around for 18 years, but perhaps their longevity can be chalked up to their consistency. They’ve maintained the same power trio lineup, and all eight of their albums have been released on the same label. Their sound has undergone only incremental changes and, even with the occasional power-couple collaboration, plum opening gig, or glowing profile, they’ve never blown or broken up, maintaining a fairly constant state of popular and critical acclaim over the past decade. But at least for the first 35 seconds, Desire Pathway teases the possibility of a shocking reinvention.
Screaming Females’ eighth album fades in with an uncharacteristic whirling synth effect, but “Brass Bell” soon reverses course, underlining everything that makes Desire Pathway a modern anomaly. Marissa Paternoster plays riffs, things that make you pick up a Gibson SG in Guitar Center with no intention of buying it. There might be occasional leads, but more often, Paternoster rips solos, ones that could easily hold their place in Guitar World alongside their 25th tablature of “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” and a new Ghost song. If Desire Pathway is anyone’s introduction to Screaming Females, it immediately reiterates why Paternoster ranked ahead of hotshots like Dave Navarro and Vernon Reid on a 2012 “Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list. Even if Screaming Females’ name and DIY operating principles inherently subvert the lemon squeezin’ excess of classic rock, their actual musicianship often aligns with the taste of the most staunch hesher revivalist.
But in 2023, classic rock stations might actually be playing Nirvana and PJ Harvey, and this is the legacy Screaming Females tapped into by recording at Pachyderm Studios—the same Minnesota facility that birthed In Utero and Rid of Me, two of the gnarliest albums funded by major label money in the ’90s, whose veins pumped stomach acid and migraine medications. In the past, these might have been best case scenarios for a Screaming Females record; indeed, they already made an LP with Steve Albini titled Ugly. Pachyderm also bore witness to less credible, though no less beloved hits from Soul Asylum and Alkaline Trio, whose unfussy and immediate variants on Midwest pop-rock are more in line with the coordinates of Desire Pathways. Though Paternoster’s booming bellow is best suited to chromatic, Mandatory Metallica melodies (“It’s All Said and Done”), it can also be accessorized by paisley jangle (“Beyond the Void”), double denim (“Let You Go”), or Sharpie-black nail varnish (“Mourning Dove”).
Much like Screaming Females’ previous albums, Desire Pathway feels like it’s competing with a bolder version of itself that sits just outside of view. This is the third album they’ve made with Matt Bayles, a guy who made his reputation producing post-metal bands like Isis and Russian Circles with clinical precision. The refined touch that felt so jarring on 2015’s Rose Mountain became familiar on 2018’s All at Once, and Desire Pathway goes even further to distance itself from the concussive force of Screaming Females’ live presence. If not exactly “heartland rock,” Screaming Females are working within its adjacent descriptors: earnest, workmanlike, lifers. Yet, the songs on Desire Pathway beg for a more audacious treatment that lets them live out their destiny as radio rock anthems in practice rather than theory. With very few exceptions—the occasional flange effect, an exaggerated volume swell at the end of “Brass Bell,” a handful of judicious and effective vocal harmonies—Desire Pathway never sounds like anything other than three people playing together in a room, albeit being seen and heard from the other side of the studio glass.
The fault isn’t entirely with Bayles, though. After a spirited Side A, Desire Pathway settles into modest tempos and conventional rhythms, as Paternoster’s commanding vocals take command more or less the same way, flattening the emotional arc implied by the subject matter: “I’m a freight train in the desert dragging chains,” “now the stage is empty and I am too,” “I’m withered in despair, a burnt pile in the sun,” “a titan of love and shame.” The lyric book reads like a volcanic, ugly cry. But Screaming Females’ entire existence has been a rare testament to consistency and, despite being five years in the making and inspired by a devastating breakup, Desire Pathway can’t help but be their most consistent album yet.
