Have you ever gone to a show and had the motherfucking time of your life? Pussy Gillette makes sure of that. Monday, March 9th at 29th Street Ballroom, frontwoman Masani Negloria takes to the stage, sporting leather pants, kitten heels and her bass ready to go, guitarist Nathan Calhoun and drummer Larry Funke sauntering right behind.
The Austin-based bilingual punk rock band opens forcefully in English before a quick switch to ‘Mala Noche,’ a vigorous Spanish boast off the band’s debut, Pussy Gillette Album. If the audience wasn’t headbanging before, Calhoun’s blues-inspired rock solo got their necks rolling, and a makeshift barricade wall began at the stage’s front. ‘Permanent Trash’ pursued, a robust exaggerant that strikes gold with the singer-songwriter’s low-registered, spunky vocals, rather reminiscent of Cherie Currie of the 70s all-girl rock band The Runaways.
The three-piece takes no forewords and no pauses, other than the chance to yell ‘mother fucker’ between each track, in either language. Each figure on stage prospers its own world, so in tune with their own tasks at hand that every member outshines. It’s halfway through that the Afro deity reaches the raunchy grit one might expect from a band crowned Pussy Gillette, with the 2024 single ‘Lovers’ repeatedly chanting “69” throughout its three-minute playthrough.
While the following eight tracks don’t open a new exhibition of vocal delivery, each alluring word sung from the vocalist’s lips hugs tight and heavy. Breakthrough song ‘So Fucked’ concludes, crowing a rebellious, repetitious, “I’m so fucked / How do I get by,” before the last proclamation of adultered humor; “It’s still Black History Month, so if you want to hit me with some cold hard cash, come find me at the merch table sucka!”
What I read after the show is that Negloria started learning bass at the beginning of the band’s formation, when she was 37 years old. A reminder of life’s unpredictability, and that the world doesn’t have to become a beige background the second you hit thirty. There is always a version of yourself that comes after the current one, if you want it.
After Pussy Gillettes set, two friends and I took a stroll to the park nearby- empty field, lonely swingset, basketball court and an impressive display of powerline dangling sneakers. The left-most swing has seen me through it all. Me at my highest. Me at my lowest. My best friend and I, strangers, cute boys, a multitude of scribbled notebooks. Once in a poem, I wrote the line “paint the stars red and the rainbows yellow,” and I think I am always on the lookout for that red star, that needle in the haystack. So much so that I think about sonder so much, I quite frequently forget that I, too, can pick up that red paint.
What all of this really means is this: There is no time war. You are superimposed in your own cosmic event. Take a page from Negloria’s book. Flip the chapter and make it a fable of your own. No intention lives beyond you.