Priests - The Seduction of Kansas

Pitchfork 77

The Washington, D.C. band’s second album is dense with ambiguities, sacrificing their debut’s quotable one-liners in favor of character sketches about the everyday banality of evil.

The Guardian 60

(Sister Polygon)

Priests’ debut album arrived with a readymade marketing angle: Nothing Feels Natural was released in the week of Donald Trump’s inauguration, a date the DC punk band had, however, planned prior to his election. To their credit, they resisted the easy association between their politically minded surf-punk and America’s 45th president – plus the album was more bleakly introspective than their socially explicit early EPs. The Seduction of Kansas flips their approach again, and partially finds them inhabiting the minds of the men who have shaped America through abuse of power: “I’m young and dumb and full of cum,” Katie Alice Greer roars on the exhilarating Jesus’ Son, which thrusts with appropriately lascivious menace.