Pussy Galore – Party Line: Dial ‘M’ For Motherfucker [Review] (PRESS, UK)

Pussy Galore
Dial M For Motherf***er
Product Inc

CACOPHONOUS. Look, I realise this will come as no surprise or problem to anyone who has stumbled across Pussy Galore’s subsonic primal thrust, but that’s what it is. Cacophonous. From the anguished bored-rich-kids yowling in the playground of “Understand Me” to the last drawn out oscillation of “Hang On”, “Dial M For Motherf***er” is one unrelenting sexual beast of an album; like having a groin thrust into your face as you’re beaten from behind. It oozes.

“Dial M” continues the process begun on “Groovy Hate F***” and side-stepped on “Right Now” and takes it one step further: the quest for the ultimate basic rock ‘n’ roll riff. Revelling purely within the boundaries of gratuitously random loving noise, it pulsates and preens itself with its ability to turn music inside out. Pussy Galore have no need to re-invent rock, because in this search they have trodden so far back along the path they’ve near dispensed with the formalities of songwriting altogether. Hence “DWDA”, a five minute gruelling litany of backward tapes and megaphonic vocals, leads into the incredibly commercial kick-ass “Dick Johnson”.

There’s no contradiction: it’s all (only) rock ‘n’ roll.
Rather than a series of songs (the linked introductions serve their purpose admirably to confuse), what we have here are a variety of rhythm tracks, nuances of guitar tone and guttural differences in the level of voice. Like The Cure’s “Disintegration”, “M For Motherf***er” is an indelible whole.

“Kicked Out” is the closest they get to their old metallic style: raw production married to that resonant twang of a guitar. The brattishness still shines through. The opener, “Understand Me”, is far closer to their sound now, cut-up shitty apathetic drum machines interspersed with tape loops and minimal guitar, swamped under a production lost somewhere ‘neath the nether regions of the White Noise Suprematists. Anathema to people reared on wide open production techniques.

“I Know Later” is a desperate searching back for roots, pinned down by an insistent snarl of a three note bass. I could sing 30,000 tumbling harmonies across the introduction of “Eat Me” as fuzz twists with acoustic, helpless and washed-out soloing.

Lyrics, like the music, are divest of all meaning to take on all meanings. This is an insular crammed-in backwoods sound with pent-up emotions howling and burning to be set free, but never allowed access.

Occasionally a Teenage Jerk girl will scream, building the tension. The tracks melt into a delicious whole.

As with Dinosaur Jr live, it’s the parts in between which make Pussy Galore so special, creating an all-encompassing wall of noise for them to bite out against, although in Pussy Galore’s case it’s more of a spiked jockstrap than a womb-like cocoon. “Do You Like Negro Music?” is astonishing: if proof were needed that Pussy Galore have succeeded in creating a sound unique to them, and only them (sorry for the anomaly), look no further. The evil, muffled vocals, squeaks of feedback, unrelenting bass, shards of badly-miked guitar and extremely tinny drums combine in a thunderous implosion of noise.

Underneath its premium of shock and sexual urgency, “Motherf***er” is possibly the most genuinely revolutionary deconstructed album I’ve heard in years. It’s also the first basic r’n’r album since Iggy first dragged his diseased torso across those blistering boards all those years ago. The phone’s off the hook, but you’re not.

EVERETT TRUE”