Julia Shapiro (Chastity Belt), Bree McKenna (Tacocat), and Stacy Peck (Pony Time) open their album screaming "Childbirth!" and "Women's rights!". Peck pounds her drum kit while Shapiro draws out each phrase, McKenna joining in on the latter. It's a puzzling forty seconds, and at first the track feels either unnecessary or like a joke. But if it is a joke, it feels both vital and too close to home when you consider that 241 representatives of the GOP recently voted to defund Planned Parenthood. It's just as well the punk trio keeps shouting on repeat as if the subject had no meaning.
Ultimately Women's Rights plays like an album created to deflect hopelessness with crude humor, and Childbirth are indiscriminate in their choice of topics, as long as they're ripe for comedy. They'll tackle anything from online dating to Seattle's influx of tech culture, brought to you by Amazon (All band members reside in the PNW). Shapiro opens "Tech Bro" with a cheerful guitar riff only to begrudgingly admit, "I'll let you explain feminism to me/ Tech bro, tech bro/ If I can use your HDTV," proving that you can be disgusted by gentrification, but intrigued with its trappings at the same time. During "Siri, Open Tinder", McKenna's backing vocals are reduced to the simple instructions "Swipe left!" or "Swipe right!" only to exclaim, "Which one are you?!" upon encountering a group photo. All over the album, repeated lyrics are interrupted with one liners to highlight peak ridiculousness.
However, it's not just dudes under attack here. Tracks like "Let's Be Bad" and "Breast Coast (Hangin' Out)" – where lyrics like "Hanging out/ Doing stuff/ With my boyfriend" and "I love him cause he's hot", read like a dig against Bethany Cosentino – are perfect for all the times when perfectly curated Pinterest boards, UGG boots, and pictures of pumpkin spice lattes on Instagram make you want to scream. In order to level the playing field, we're gifted the single "Nasty Grrls" – a laundry list of disgusting habits that "nice young ladies" shouldn't indulge in, like wiping away boogers and never washing bras, amongst others transgressions of hygiene. (Hate to break it to you, but we do dip everything in ranch.)
Then, of course, there's the matter of the band's namesake. They're quick to point out that once you've reached spawning age, women's conversations are downgraded to a competitive arena. Take "More Fertile Than You" where Shapiro outright brags, "I've got eggs by the dozen and you got none". But by far, the highlight of the whole album is the hilarious and dark "Baby Bump". The line, "I'm that horrifying person from your past/ I'm a party creep/ Why are we still friends?" delivered by a snide friend to an expectant mom, rings painfully true. Those of us who choose to abstain from motherhood often feel we become nothing more than grubby, little deviants who snort coke off a key in your bathroom. When will we settle down?
With all of these cultural touch points, it's clear that Childbirth are not concerned with maintaining relevance over the next ten years. Women's Rights is an album created entirely for the moment, which keeps the spirit lighthearted even when they're dealing with heavy-handed subject matter. You know exactly what they're referencing, and they're quick to make you laugh. The problem is, it's easy to feel clobbered by the album's bluntness and their variety of topics don't differ much from the first record. Shapiro and McKenna's back-and-forth calls get tedious and the feeling become less "Well, that's funny!" and more "Okay, we get it". But there's a point somewhere in there, too. Women are subjected to such a barrage of expectations and judgements that it's fucking exhausting even when it's funny, and sometimes you have to mock everything because you feel powerless to change it. It makes you so angry that you have to keep repeating yourself.
