Music / Chastity Belt
Preview: Chastity Belt, Exchange
Seattle rock band Chastity Belt have become exceptional at speaking about the moments you feel desperately alone, broken, and anxious, but they haven’t always been like this. Their 2013 album, No Regerts, was full of youthful braggadocio that shouted along to songs like (Giant) Vagina (in which singer Julia Shapiro becomes a… you guessed it) and Pussy Weed Beer, which includes the immortal line, “We like the night, so turn off the lights and take off your pants.”
But now something’s shifted. You could hear it on Time to Go Home, their misanthropic, beer-hazed, unblinking album of 2015, but it’s even more present now. I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone lives a place between shoegaze and post-punk, and reveals that the band have clearly been thinking on the abyss for a while now. But as a shadow has crept over their work, it has become even more touching. It reaches into the darkest corners of loneliness and drawing them into the light. Is this what growing up feels like?
Chastity Belt play the Exchange on Monday, September 11 2017. Grab a ticket at www.exchangebristol.com/events/2017-09-11-chastity-belt-exchange
is needed now More than ever
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