Coming upon Great Scott late last Monday night, no rx the crowd inside was already thick with the patrons there to see openers Caténine (a Massachusetts-based recording project with advertised Cure, Field Mice, and New Order influences) and Ovlov (good and loud Connecticut rock and roll). My spread-thin show-going time on a work night held allegiance to the closing band I kept missing every time they’d make the drive from Northampton to Boston. But the other Monday night? It was finally time I saw Potty Mouth.
I actually first read about Potty Mouth right here a few months ago when Allston Pudding posted the band’s “Damage” video. They’ve been reaching all kinds of corners of the Internet for a lot longer, though, their name popping up everywhere from NPR to Noisey to Elle to (the infamously trolled comments of) Brooklyn Vegan to all over Allston Pudding to… Jesus, really, they’re everywhere.
With good reason.
Formed by mostly former/current Smith students who met at college with varying musicality prior to becoming what is Potty Mouth, I was excited and hopeful, interest piqued to see this band with the Internet buzz. Knowing, too, that their lead singer picked up guitar only upon joining the band, that their growth as a band is as much about the growth of its individual parts, was admirable and intriguing, especially considering how catchy they are, how I still can’t get these guitar solos out of my head after seeing them last Monday night, how I have these lyrics repeating in my ears even a day later.
They ripped open the seams of their set with barely an introduction, their sound something like the fuzz of Jawbreaker marrying the pop sensibility of Screeching Weasel, something like revisiting ‘90s punk and post-punk, bringing it back into the forefront, something like that but not it exactly. Singer and guitarist Abby Weems, clad in red plaid leggings and Chuck Taylors, seemed to sing through the hair in her face, unbothered, a side effect of the beat-infused head banging. Watching a drummer like the black-t-shirt’d Victoria Mandanas is smile-inducing – she’s the kind of drummer who lets the crash ring euphoric from the cymbal, who has her foot tight on Robo-like kick drum blasts, the kit an extension of its player.
Coupled with the bouncing of Phoebe Harris’s lead pop guitar licks and bassist Ally Einbinder trained to her bass in her own corner of the stage, the foursome caused the crowd to woop and holler, the band later calling this particular show their Boston album release for Hell Bent, which was officially sent into the world in September.
They’re difficult to pigeonhole, tough to genre-ize, living somewhere in the space of “indie” and “punk” and “lo-fi,” sounding something like ‘90s nostalgia but altogether new, reluctant to define themselves, too. They closed their set too soon, Weems alerting the crowd to two more songs left, the crowd calling back for four. And when the end came, their last song was titled appropriately, one of my favorites off Hell Bent, a song called “The Better End,” beginning with Harris doing that Art Brut style of sing-talking after a mild and minor intro, “You cut me out, and now you’re screwed, I know it’s hard, well boo hoo,” a departure from the steady mellow of Weems. Mid-song, everything changed, the tune switching tempo, style, and vocals at the two-and-a-half-minute mark, flying faster, harder, the seams ripped open again, the bark peeled from the surface. The Better End, indeed.
