The women in the Seattle indie group Chastity Belt met and formed in college, and their debut is sly and charming about college, and fresh-out-of-college concerns-- how dumb the objects of your sexual desire can be; which parties suck, because of whom and what can be done about it; fucking and drugs, and how great and lousy both make you feel; the regressive fun to be had shouting the word "vagina." "Are we having fun?" lead singer Julia Shapiro asks repeatedly on "Seattle Party", and No Regerts is a great album by smart kids who are smart enough to understand how pressing that question is.
The vibe on No Regerts (the typo is intentional) is sprightly and relaxed. The members taught themselves their instruments, and you can hear uncertain hands and excellent, sophisticated ears in their playing. Lydia Lund's rhythm guitar is slightly hiccupy but confident; Gretchen Grimm's drumming is simple, but patient and sensitive and casually slack, like drumming is just one of several things she's doing at that moment. On "Black Sail" and "Seattle Party", her soft puff of a beat stretches the song out pleasingly in the center, like the band is all crowded in the middle of a trampoline.
No Regerts breathes some of the same untroubled air as the first Vampire Weekend album; it would sound excellent listened to from a pool raft. Lead singer Julia Shapiro has things on her mind, though, and her lyrics are often sharply humorous. Everything she says is so obnoxious, funny, and sad, but she's never mean: "Your tattoos are so deep/ They really make me think/ And your life has been so rough/ You've really been through so much," she deadpans on "Seattle Party". Her mockery is the gentle kind that actually might be aimed at drawing someone out: "If you dance, if you dance, the girls won't give you a chance/ you're a real cool guy, you won't look us in the eye," she teases. You get the sense the narrator wouldn't mind if the guy decided to start dancing.
You can hear the same goofily sarcastic warm spirit in the politics-of-sport-fucking "James Dean", ("Oh boy, when I fuck you, you make me feel like a prostitute/ yeah, when you fuck me, I make you feel just like James Dean.") And then sometimes she is gleefully puerile; there is a song called "Giant Vagina", and you suspect the chance to shout the chorus might the only reason the song exists. On "Nip Slip", she whispers the title like it's "Je T'aime", and then helpfully adds, "I can see your nips." There are silly moments on No Regerts that cut down on its replayability, but there are also dusky, gorgeous songs like "Black Sail" and "Happiness", which latch onto and hold a pink-skies melancholy for their running time. The album's slightness is part of its overall appeal, though. No Regerts sounds young and callow and smart and horny all at the same time. Playing it feels like a night out.
