Pretty in Pink
Local rockers The Pink Spiders release striking album of bubblegum punk
by Tracy Moore
The Pink Spiders
Hot Pink (CI Records)
Sylvia Plath once wrote that if songwriters changed the word love to lust in popular songs, they would come nearer to the truth. In the land of The Pink Spiders, this distinction is willfully obliterated, then splattered across a beer-soaked canvas of blurred cityscapes, chain-smoked cigarettes and fast getaways. Perched at the center is a rotating cast of girls who figure in broad strokes. They are either fast or difficult but always elusive, and often pined for as they walk away.
Hot Pink, the debut album by local swingers The Pink Spiders, blazes through a half-hour of slurred hyper-pop, the musical equivalent of mixing a lot of beer with a speedball. It's a record about being on tour, about falling in and out of love as often as you run out of cigarettes. It's 11 quick fixes of bubblegum rock on insolent overdrive, Buddy Holly on a punk binge.
The Pink Spiders are Matt Friction on guitar and vocals, Jon Decious on bass, Bob Ferrari on drums and Raf Cevallos on guitar and keys. They aren't newcomers to the local rock scene: Friction abandoned a dalliance with emo in his former band, Silent Friction, to rework the pop song. But in this lineup, the Spiders have only been around about a year and have spent most of that year on the road. There's an alternate reality for touring bands most of us will never experience. Different cities become merely different venues, each filled with its own set of bizarre characters, super-fans, seedy clubs and seedier hotels. And, of course, there are the girls.
Friction mines this experience with an almost cinematic sense for the way that songs can be like little vignettes. Scenes are set with a brief nod to the weather or a mood, dialogue moves characters into position, and dramatic action unfolds. In "Going Steady," a skirt is chased and sex is negotiated at the end of a shapeless night. "Doo wah doo wah / Things are getting petty / She said no more sex unless we're going steady," Friction laments. "I said, 'All right, good night / Wake me when you change your mind.' " The chord progression is from "Peggy Sue," only sped up and hijacked with cynicism. "There's no time to fool around when I'm in another town tomorrow," the last line admonishes.
There are a handful of other standout tracks on the album, notably "Hollywood Fix," which delivers its chorus in bursts of brash crooning with a beat you could bop to. "Talk Hard" and "Modern Swinger" both bear multiple listenings, the former for its explosive, cathartic energy (Friction's vocals seem a cigarette and a stiff drink away from nervous exhaustion), the latter for its new-wave riff a la the English Beat's "Mirror in the Bathroom."
The production, which was done by Jason Bullock at Lake Fever Productions, is mid-fi. It's just grainy enough to give the record a retro feel, yet still gives the guitars top billing. The CD begins with the pop of a needle hitting vinyl, incorporates a crackly hiss into the crossfades and ends with a scratch. It's also designed like a vinyl record (replete with a recommended needle life chart) and looks worn with repeated playing. The artwork and the band's getup—all hot-pink and black clothing, skinny ties and new wave haircuts—is all part of a marketing scheme upheld to stunning effect, right down to the pink mic stands. Sure, the look's a bit calculated, and it's certainly been done before, but in this case it gels. At shows, the fans have begun sporting their own pink and black clothing and accessories. And sure, they're mostly girls, but they bring cigarettes.
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