Priests - Early Recordings

Pitchfork 78

A mere week after forming, the Washington D.C. band Priests sought physical proof of their existence. The group was a trio then—drummer Daniele Daniele, vocalist Katie Alice Greer, guitarist G.L. Jaguar—and they headed to a basement in Maryland to record their first four songs, which would become 2011’s Tape 1. “I was very eager to have evidence of the band exist for myself, because I didn’t know how long it would last, and I wanted to make music more than anything,” Greer explained. Six years later, now a quartet, Priests have come a long way. Following 2014’s overtly political Bodies and Control and Money and Power EP, they released their debut LP earlier this year and it was a huge achievement, exploring new sounds (R&B, glam pop, classical) as well as personal vulnerability. The road has been rocky, but Priests have survived.

Their sound has expanded, but the newly-released Early Recordings, compiling their first two cassettes, shows that Priests’ sense of purpose was intact from the start. Their proximity to their influences cannot be overlooked. Jaguar grew up embedded in the D.C. scene where he saw influential punk bands like Fugazi, Black Eyes, and Quix*o*tic and attended political actions against the Bush presidency. Greer has played in the legendary Ian Svenonius’ Chain and the Gang, who insert a kitschy playfulness onto a punk philosophy. All of these elements come into play as Priests infuse the hardcore pummel and DIY ethics of their city with new life.

Priests’ first ever song was “Diet Coke,” a shrieking satirization of product placement. Greer sounds like an over-caffeinated cheerleader as she chants the names of products, while Jaguar coins his soon-to-be signature chordless rockabilly riff and Daniele threatens to splinter the floor with her drumming. The venomous guitar in “Cobra” sounds ready to bite your head off, as does Greer’s spiteful sneer. “Talking,” on the other hand, resembles Nothing Feels Natural’s contemplative title track thanks to its pensive beginning. But when Daniele’s sticks count off and Greer’s vocals kick in, the song suddenly evokes a wistful Beat Happening track. “Let’s talk about the nature of a classroom/Let’s talk about rewarding complicity,” Greer wails, weaving together conceptual and visceral collaboration; “The world is not so black and white,” she sings later on “The World.”

In 2012, while Greer was on tour with Chain and the Gang, Daniele and Jaguar befriended Taylor Mulitz, who became the band’s bassist. That same year, the members of Priests formed a label called Sister Polygon to put out their own records and those of their extended network (Snail Mail, Downtown Boys, and Sneaks among them). 2013’s Tape Two was the fourth of these releases. After two years of touring and the addition of Mulitz, Priests’ ideas coalesced. Jaguar made an effort to distance his playing from that of the bands he had grown up seeing—on Tape Two, he avoids traditional chords in exchange for minimal, single notes that sounds angular, twangy, and surfy.

Tape Two opens with the fiery “Leave Me Alone,” a callout track inspired by Bush Tetras’ “Too Many Creeps.” “You wanna know what I think? I think you look like a creep!” Greer barks, the scratch in her voice revealing just the slightest trace of fatigue. The bouncy Daniele-led “Say No” exudes sensuality, punctuated by shouts and groans. In the penultimate track “Twelve,” chants of “talking protesting demonstrating” turns a subdued meditation into a one liner: “But then someone said ‘We can’t have a revolution that responds to any of these things.’” The spoken-word piece “USA (Incantations)” exposes an inherent inequality in the U.S. that goes all the way back to the signing of the Constitution. “Unless you are a rich, land-owning, cisgender, heterosexual white man-man-man through and through, things were always bad for you here,” Greer chirps.

Greer speaks often on the use of pop culture as a weapon, as a means of subversion, and as a pervasive form of communication. The brilliant “Lana” uses the Born to Die singer as a means of examining the perception of female celebrity, beauty, and performativity. “Women who are beautiful by societal standards in a place of power often elicit that kind of backlash,” Greer said, referring to the constant criticism of Del Rey’s relationship with the male gaze. The Daniele-penned and sung “Watch You (Alternate Mix)” further continues to explore gender and objectification. We tend to consider scopophilia, or the pleasure gained from the gaze, in terms of the subject; “Watch You” explores the spectator or performer’s pleasure in looking at the audience. “I’m a pervert, I’ve got the gaze,” Daniele taunts, all exaggerated braggadocio. The song sounds purposefully creepy thanks to slick strings, a greasy riff, and drums that sound metallic.

Although they waited six years to release a full-length, Early Recordings illustrates that even in their earliest days, Priests were pushing themselves and the audience they earned. It was only with Nothing Feels Natural that Priests found emotional harmony in their discord, but on tapes 1 and Two, they were beginning to examine and searingly critique the social and political systems around them. “Time waits for no one,” playwright and intellectual Lillian Hellman is quoted as saying in a Tape Two song named for her. Early Recordings proves that Priests took the sentiment to heart.