Written by Anika Maculangan

Mascara dripping down your cheek. You can’t help but pull your hair out. You’ve been gritting your teeth for days. And haven’t stopped biting your nails. Girlhood is a bitch. And how you wish to resign from it so so badly. These are the feelings sparked out of Pry’s latest EP release entitled Resignation Letter which addresses girlhood’s most significant moments of defeat. It opens up with Face Cards which from the tonalities observed in the vocals, immediately bring us back to those riot grrrrl days, during the time of bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile. The songs refuse to be compliant, and intentionally disobey. They protest against compliance, saying yeah, I’m gonna sing my heart out, whether you like it or not. Forget the coy and meek persona that is often forced on female leads— it’s about damn time to break loose from those stereotypes, those stigmas that seem to hinder things like girl anger, girl hysteria, and girl rage, when really there’s much reason to feel frustrated. The wrath is there. And the girls are displeased. So let them make songs about it. And let them sing to those songs however loud as they wish to do so. It’s catharsis. It’s screaming to a song as loud as you can, until your throat is sore the next day, and the day after. It’s jumping and moshing as hard as you can, until every bone and muscle in your body feels alive. In fact, when I was listening to the EP, I grew excited to hopefully someday get to see Pry perform songs from this EP live, because I could already imagine it being some kind of a freeing experience. But that’s how I’ve always viewed the band, as one that makes music for the soul. If anything, healing, in this sort of badass type of way. They’re pretty straightforward with the messages they try to communicate in their songs. They say hey, I’m feeling this or that way, and unashamedly transcribes those emotions into music. It’s admirable, especially since there precedes restraints when it comes to filtering lyrics or even romanticising certain things in them. Pry takes no shit from anything or anyone, and that shows every step of the way. 

You put on your black stockings and lace dress, and go out to face the world with your bravest face. In songs like Effy’s Diary, we think of that one character from the TV show, Skins. And then when songs like Girlhood is a Spectrum come up, we think of every other girl we’ve met in our lives who is just trying to survive. Many times, they’ve told us how they’ve nearly given up, but somehow, they still stand tall on those jagged combat boots. The EP is one hell of a rollercoaster ride. It includes some synthlines, but then jump cuts to sudden accents of hardcore and heavy-metal. It feels disconcerting at first, and a bit rattling, but maybe that’s the effect it hopes to leave — the many drastic ups-and-downs of life that lead from one dropdown to another. Some songs such as Ain’t so Suite do in fact feel so roughly-hewn that it feels like someone is dragging along a piece of chalk across a blackboard, making it caterwaul into this razor-edged sound. But it provokes a sense of intensity that is more than welcome. You look at the neighboring tracks like Mono Mania and go, wow, I needed that balance. If anything, it clearly demonstrates the band’s ability to adapt to the many variants of instrumental it seems to embibe. With the dynamic observed between energetic motifs and drab tempos, there awakens this complex release of sound. The radical switches are ever misunderstood, but that’s the point of it. Looking at their previous release, the album from last year, called The Party’s Over, we can see how much the band has opened its doors to new avenues of sound. They no longer just adhere to one sound, but rather make do with other kinds of rhythms to add more flavor into the mix. It’s no longer just those fast measures of velocity that make their music distinct, or the harsh vocals for that matter, it’s the many shapes and forms their sound can now take. What we can say from now on is that they’re not just a noise band, they’re a lot of things. And that shows growth in their development as a band. Remember their days during the era of Headcount and Lone Dweller? Now it doesn’t just feel as singular, like the band can embody more bodies than only one. And what I can say is, I’m intrigued to see what else they’ll do, and where else they’ll go from here. 

And the cover is something we can’t not talk about. It’s this strange-looking barbie but also not quite. Think punk girl with an eye cap, about to tell her boss to fuck off. She’s about to blow it all up. Music rules her world. And no, she doesn’t care what you think. She’s maybe someone we all aspire to be — to be that confident, that ready to take on the world. She’s the cape-wearing doll we all wish we had when we were younger, to look up to. Perhaps she would have warned us, about how bad it’s all gonna get, and then would have given us a pep talk. But now, we have this EP. So that’s enough. For now, we’ll turn to this medley of rebellious songs, to help us snap out of the trance, so that we can return to this messed up world, convinced that nothing can bring us down. 

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