For just over two years, Washington, D.C.'s Chalk Circle were a staple in the city's early-80s punk scene, part of a group that included (but was assuredly not limited to) both Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins (then known as Henry Garfield). But while Rollins and MacKaye built lasting legacies off the strength of their 80s work, Chalk Circle have been regulated to cult-hero status, revered by in-the-know punk fans-- including No Age's Dean Spunt, who is responsible for co-releasing this anthology on his PPM imprint.
Aside from Chalk Circle's rare live performances-- they played only four shows-- their obscurity could have something to do with the way their slippery post-punk didn't fit in with the righteous (if slightly homogenous) thrashing of their peers. Don Fleming points out in the liner notes that the band had even hoped for some releases on the increasingly influential Dischord Records, but the label ultimately decided they did not fit on their roster. And while that was true for the majority of their slender output, "The Slap" and "Scrambled", with all their dissonance and half-shouted lyrics, would have made for a perfect Dischord 7".
Built around the songwriting partnership of Sharon Cheslow and Mary Green, Chalk Circle's sound fit in nicely with peers the Slits and the Raincoats, all creators of an innovative brand of post-punk. Reflection opens with its title track, and Green's introspective lyrics ensure it lives up to its name, while Cheslow's guitar dances around Tamera Lyndsay's bassline and Anne Bonafede's polyrhythmic drumming. "My drumming was heavily inspired by the Tony DeFranco song 'Heartbeat, It's a Lovebeat'," Bonafede states in the liner notes. "As a matter of fact, all of my drum riffs were variations of that song." Just like the Slits and Raincoats, Chalk Circle were ahead of their time, with "Uneasy Friend" adopting uneasy back-and-forth vocals and a similarly jittery energy, and closer "Subversive Pleasure" presaging not only modern punk bands such as Mika Miko and the Coathangers, but the entire riot grrrl movement of the late 80s and early 90s.
Perhaps due to her interest in poetry, Green was a pretty remarkable lyricist in a genre where words were used primarily as rocks to throw at the glass windows of the establishment. "The Slap" uses the image of violence against women as a metaphor for initiation into society, while "The Look" is an almost-satirical glance into patriarchal standards of female beauty. On "Reflection" and "Easy Escapes", Green turns the lens on herself, forging personal takes on romance and life. "Love songs don't touch me," Green sings on the latter. "But is that what I really want?"
With exception of "The Look" and the rough mix of "Easy Escapes", the best work on Reflection has already been released via early-80s tape compilations. The previously unreleased five of the album's 12 songs were live tracks and basement demos, which serve more as interesting sketches than vital documents. Peppered throughout the album, they provide rough-hewn counterparts to their studio-recorded work. They're not terribly essential, but they definitely provide a deeper context to the band's history.
"We wanted to have a band because we loved playing music and listening to music," Cheslow states in the liner notes. "We saw girls from N.Y., L.A., San Francisco, and London playing in bands and they gave us inspiration and courage." In 2011, the notion of an all-girl band is just as important as it ever was, primarily because we're still using the term "all-girl band" as if predominantly female rock groups were still a novelty of some sort. While women are unfortunately still fighting to be treated as equals-- even in the so-called "liberal utopia" that is underground rock music-- it becomes increasingly necessary to shed a light on the female bands that time left behind, especially ones as prescient as Chalk Circle. Reflection offers a broadly overlooked chapter in not just the history of women in American punk rock, but the history of American punk rock overall.
