Consumer Guide Album

Pretty Girls Make Graves: Good Health [Lookout, 2002]
"All we are, all we are, all we are/Is trying not to fall into line," goes half of one song, and by dint of palpable effort and notable skill, this grrrlish Seattle neopostpunk quintet succeed--except insofar as neopostpunk sets a line of its own, of course. For three EPs now become one 27-minute CD, they thrash out herky-jerk bombardiering, guitar abrasions that won't go away, and themes, classic themes: alienation, separation, betrayal, all that negative intensity. The counterbalance is a golden age they strive to re-create in the present tense: "And nothing else matters/When I turn it up loud." Probably the struggle will prove too much in the end. But Fugazi has made a life of it--a life some pretty girls aspire to. A-